Fantasy Affair
by JMK758
Summary: Gibbs and Co. lead lives of danger but now, in their strangest case, lives are changed, loyalties tested, friendships strained and one of the Team pays the Ultimate Price. Murder, intrigue and death. Please do not reveal what happens in your Reviews.
1. Dining with Death

Disclaimer: Belisarius Productions owns NCIS. I don't even own Abby or Ziva – frack! I do, however, own Dawn and Siobhan (rhymes with Sha-vawn), and they're enough for any man. ;)  
This is my fifth NCIS Mystery, all following one progression. While 'Superheroine Affair', 'Jurisdiction', 'Wiccan Affair' and 'Sacramental Seal' all stand alone, the back stories cover a progression related to the fourth Season of the Series. Reference is made to several points of these back stories, so you'll want to read them to familiarize yourself with the characters and situations. Later stories will include 'Assassin', 'Dark Night' and 'Inner Darkness'.  
Dawn Caldwell of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana was introduced in 'Jurisdiction', while Reverend Siobhan O'Mallory made her first appearance in 'Sacramental Seal'.  
These and all other characters are fictional. There is no similarity to any person, living or dead.  
Rating: T - or NCis-17; Occasional violence, graphic descriptions of autopsy and forensic evidence, frank adult topics, murder, intrigue - typical days for our NCIS friends.  
Your Reviews are invited.

The Fantasy Affair  
By JMK758  
Prologue

"Honey, I'm really not hungry," Nikki pleads as she tugs the taller man's black jacket. In the walk from their car to the restaurant, she's more concerned with the setting than her hunger. She knows his mind; thirty years of marriage tonight is enough to teach her thoroughly. This place is far too expensive for their budget.

"What's wrong?"

"Al, honey, I know this place. You don't tip the Maitre 'd, you put him in your Will!"

"That's out of a TV show."

"But–"

"Look, honey, we can afford it."

"I know, but...."

He pulls her into his arms, holding her close to his tuxedoed body. "Listen, hon, for our–"

A 'shump!' from behind him makes him stiffen, his chest thrust out before he pitches forward into her arms.

Nikki grabs him before he falls. She's horrified to look down her husband's body and see an arrow shaft protruding from his back. "_AL_!"

x

"_Help_!" she screams. Unable to hold his greater bulk, she falls to her knees. She looks up, about to scream again and sees a man running to them, braking to a halt a few feet in front of her. He's tall, wears a brown leather jacket and a backpack.

"What happened?" he asks, looking down at the man who lies face down on the parking lot pavement, the arrow sticking upward out of his back.

"What do you _mean_ 'what happened'?" Nikki cries. "_Look_!" Al Morrison lies face down, unmoving, blood covering the back of his tuxedo jacket.

"Did you see who did it?" he asks, reaching over his shoulder into his backpack.

"No!" she cries hysterically.

"Yes, you did," he assures her, drawing from his bag a long length of flexible metal, one side of which is lined with a dozen blades resembling shark's teeth. Nikki, on her knees, tries to withdraw as he swings the metal. The sharp blades wrap twice about her throat, piercing deep as she screams.

Bracing himself, he gives a mighty yank and the blades cut deep, saw into her neck, cut off her shriek as they slice to her vertebrae. The blades nearly sever her head as they whip about. She's pulled forward in an explosive wash of blood and lands across the still body.

The man stands above the gory corpses, blood dripping from each of the long 'teeth' onto Nikki's back. He drops the weapon, the blades curling upon her.

"Happy Anniversary."

Chapter One  
Dining with Death

Dr. Donald Mallard rises from his chair in the Cocktail Lounge adjoining the main dining hall of La Chateau Julienne and tugs his tuxedo jacket into place. Across the room a tall young woman with long jet black hair, accompanied by an equally spectacular if slighter blonde woman, approach him.

The dark woman is intimately familiar, though her appearance is not. Normally he knows her to wear the most stunning - no, _shocking _attire. It's unusual to see her in a sleeveless black gown which sweeps down her body, and even the daringly deep 'V' is tastefully attractive, the whole effect less shocking than her 'normal' appearance.

The younger woman beside her, at 22 a mere four years her junior, is a picture of elegance. Her long blonde hair is artistically arrayed, sweeping down to an off-the-shoulders jade gown that hugs her svelte figure quite flatteringly.

"Good evening, my dears," Mallard says, employing all of his considerable charm. He gives the taller woman a discreet kiss on her cheek, social conventions allowing for more than a simple wave in greeting. "You look radiant."

"Thank you, Ducky." Abby tries not to blush. The dress is so far from what she's used to that she'd been self-conscious all evening. She has to admit, however, that nothing less would do justice to the man's tuxedo.

"And you must be Ms. Caldwell," he says, turning all his attention to the blonde woman. While not ignoring his friend, he manages to convey that her jade-clad companion has his full attention, a difficult thing to master but which he pulls off with aplomb.

"Dawn, _this _is Ducky." Abby is clearly concluding a buildup she had begun earlier.

"I'm happy to meet you, Dr. Mallard," Dawn says, extending her hand, her voice softened by shyness.

"Ducky, please." Far from shaking her hand, he takes it, bows and kisses it.

Dawn feels a tingle flash through her. She'd seen such Courtly manners in films, but no one had ever used such with her. She senses that with this man it's not an affectation, this is his normal manner. "Ducky," she smiles, her voice still quietly shy.

She had been as uncomfortable about this evening as Abby had been, even more so because lately she doesn't do well in social situations. When they'd gone shopping for clothes - rental, fortunately, rather than purchase - she'd been taken aback by her friend's suggestions, based upon the reputation of the place to which they had been invited. Upon seeing the tuxedoed man in this overwhelming setting, she's even more nervous. A meal here would cost an entire week's salary on a kindergarten teacher's wages. To be guests of a man she's never met is a daunting prospect.

She's amazed, however, to realize her discomfort has been put aside barely seconds after meeting this man - and all without her awareness.

x

"I must say, Ducky, this is quite a place you've chosen." Abby looking about the Lounge, vastly impressed. To her, 'eating out' is the Great Wall Chinese eat in / take out on her corner.

"I do not normally do so, but this is a special occasion. Dining out should always be a special occasion, and with such lovely ladies as my guests it shall be a memorable one."

Dawn is still awed. Her usual 'dining out' experiences are little different from Abby's, and this setting is still slightly intimidating. "Th - thank you. I - hope it...."

"Did you have any difficulty finding the Restaurant?" he inquires of Abby, mostly to save the young woman.

"No, but for some reason the parking lot is closed. I had to leave the 'batmobile' about a block away." The 'batmobile' is her nickname for her black convertible which, though it doesn't bear a resemblance to its fictional namesake, is a fully stocked mobile Forensics vehicle - which just happens to be appropriately decorated.

"I'd like to thank you, Dr. Mal - 'Ducky', for inviting me," Dawn says, beginning to recover. "And especially for everything you've done for me."

"It is my pleasure and privilege, Madam," he assures her gallantly.

x

About a week after Independence Day, in Clarkston Lakes, Virginia, Dawn had become the first victim of a serial rapist who had preyed upon that community. She'd called upon her lifelong friend Abby Sciuto for help and Abby had dropped everything - including most NCIS' regulations and a host of legal ones.

The case had been a tense one, both because of jurisdictional issues and the escalating violence of the assaults. It had ultimately led to the death of a Navy Lieutenant before the perpetrator was stopped in a horrific climax. Of the three _known _victims, Dawn was the least physically injured, though her emotional and psychological injuries had and still require psychiatric counseling to enable her to regain control of her life. She hopes for enough recovery to resume her duties as a kindergarten teacher – in 4 days.

It will be a longer time before she recovers. Today she's 'managing'.

This Labor Day weekend, the final period before school reopens, was planned as a vacation from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. It's a final opportunity to get together with her old friend without the pressures of work and worse.

When Ducky had heard she was coming north, he'd suggested meeting her and conceived this plan for an evening the young woman would not soon forget.

x

"Here are our other guests," Ducky announces, turning their attention to the entrance where a tuxedoed Tim McGee escorts a redheaded woman. Tim is dashing in his tuxedo, but it's the woman beside him that captures their attention. When last Ducky and Abby had seen her, she'd been attired in her 'uniform' of black skirt and light blue shirt together with an inch high band of stiff white that encircled her throat. Now she wears a sky-blue, off the shoulders gown that accents her long red hair.

x

When Ducky had invited McGee and O'Mallory to this social evening, Abby hadn't been put out. It wasn't like he was inviting _Ziva_. And McGee, though he might possibly be linked in Dawn's mind with the incident in Clarkston Lakes (she'd even _dreamed_ of him as her attacker), he's what Abby considers a 'safe date'. He's hardly likely to drive the young woman to a panic attack by his mere presence.

Dawn had told her she'd had too many of those over the past month, but Abby feels her friend can feel safe with Tim. And she also wants to see the man in a social engagement without Ziva.

His companion's presence is an unexpected but pleasant addition to the 'mix'. Certainly, gorgeous though she is - Abby certainly will give credit where it is due - neither woman could feel 'threatened' by her.

x

McGee and O'Mallory are old friends, the others having met her last week during the distressing events at St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church. The mystery had resulted in the deaths of at least two members of that Church and the disappearance of a third before the perpetrator had been caught. Following this McGee had proposed to NCIS Director Jenny Shepherd that O'Mallory's skills could best be used by filling a long-existing gap in the ranks of the NCIS Headquarters Division. In this capacity she could use her talents to assist the Agency in the same way her fellows do for the Uniformed Services.

"_That's_ your new Chaplain?" Dawn whispers. Abby'd told her they'd recently hired a _woman_ to the post, but it's still a surprise. For a woman to be a Priest is something Dawn had heard of, but as a Roman Catholic it's still something more of story than 'fact'.

"She is indeed, my dear," Ducky assures her sotto vocé just before the pair reaches them. "Good evening, my friends," he greets them warmly, focusing all his attention then on the woman. When she extends her hand to shake his, he takes and kisses it as he had Dawn's. "You are truly elegant, my dear."

"Thank you, Doctor," the red haired woman replies in a soft voice flavored with a strong Irish brogue. She's taken slightly aback by his courtly manner. The times they'd met previously he had been quite polite but on both occasions they had been on 'business'.

x

"Sorry, we're late," McGee apologizes. "There's some problem. Parking lot's half full but they have the gate closed, no one in."

"Think nothing of it, my boy, you're right on time," Ducky assures him.

"Miss Caldwell, it's good to see you again."

"It's good to see you too, Agent McGee."

"Tim, please; I'm off duty. May I present Reverend Siobhan O'Mallory, NCIS' newest Chaplain?" He introduces the woman with a warm smile of long, close friendship; pronouncing her name 'Sha-vawn'. "Siobhan, this is Dawn Caldwell, Abby's friend from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana."

"Pleased to meet you," Siobhan turns to Ducky, "and thank you for inviting me."

"You're most welcome, my dear. This is, in fact, something of a celebration in _your_ honor as well. The first social event we've managed since your Appointment."

"Thank you."

"Abby tells me you're new?" Dawn inquires, uncertain how to begin the conversation with the taller redhead.

"Yes, I've just been with Enkiss for a few days."

"Enkiss?" Dawn asks, momentarily perplexed. "Oh, I get it. I like that, it sounds softer, more feminine."

"Well we do have a woman Director," she points out with a smile, "and women do hold all the _key_ positions."

"Amen," Abby agrees.

x

Ducky and Tim exchange bemused glances, feeling distinctly outnumbered. Ducky is not sure how the younger Agent feels about this assessment of NCIS' priorities, but for himself he would not have it any other way.

"And on that note--" Whatever he would have said is interrupted by the tones of McGee's cell phone. Even before Tim can open his tuxedo to remove the offending instrument hidden under his cummerbund, Ducky's phone starts playing a bagpipe rendition of 'Scotland the Brave'. The two men draw their phones and compare the single word upon each screen: [Gibbs].

"I should have turned it off," McGee says dismally, but he knows the futility of that prospect. Turning off his phone is the worst possible idea.

"What do you suppose the odds are that he is calling to wish us 'bon appetite'?"

"About the same as his calling to offer to pick up the check," McGee concludes wryly.

Ducky gives McGee a 'be my guest' gesture and he answers his phone. "Yes, Boss." While he listens, Abby's phone in her black wrist bag, which is barely large enough for the phone and other 'essentials', begins playing the theme from 'The Munsters'. Dawn giggles briefly, but quickly covers her lips. There is no joy in any of them.

"Ducky's here with me, so are Abby, Mother O'Mallory and Ms. Caldwell," he looks to the latter two women. "Hello." He gives them a helpless shrug as Ducky's and Abby's phones cease their dissonance. "Right, Boss," he closes his phone and his expression gives adequate expression of his thoughts. "A Navy Captain and his wife have been found dead," he reports, gives them the address and turns to their two guests. "I'm really sorry."

"It's all right," Dawn assures him, not allowing herself to think of two hours in a beauty parlor and a rented gown.

"Well, at least this time we will not have to journey far," Ducky comments.

"Why's that?"

He is actually surprised by the question. "That address is the parking lot of this establishment, the lot to which you were unable to gain admittance."

xx

Thinking back, McGee is not entirely surprised. He'd found the restaurant on the corner of the block by the intersections of the streets, not by numbers. The Agents withhold all comment as they exit the building, turn left and work their way through a thickening crowd to the entrance of the restricted lot, their gold shields gain them admittance under the yellow 'Crime Scene' tape to the lot illuminated by the high headlight beams and flashing lights of Metro PD vehicles.

Siobhan O'Mallory and Dawn Caldwell remain on the rear of the growing crowd while the others enter. "You're not going in?" Dawn asks the taller woman.

O'Mallory shakes her head, not taking her eyes off the little she can see or her attention away from her prayers. She has her own shield in her purse, but what work she could carry out can be as efficiently accomplished at a distance.

"No; I'd just be in the way in there. Tomorrow morning I can administer Last Rites when Dr. Mallard has the bodies in his Autopsy Room. This evening all I can do is pray." From the corner of her eye, she sees Dawn cross herself with that familiar start that tells her the young woman had forgotten. She can't blame her, being this close to death is something she is not used to either.

She knows the encountering of dead bodies will be an occupational hazard of her new life from this time forward, but she is in no rush to begin that phase of her duties. She will perform that sad duty tomorrow in Autopsy. She could never get close during the Medical Examiner's investigation now; so, having an 'excuse' to remain behind with the only non-Enkiss member of the group, she doesn't hesitate to do so.

Completing her prayers, she turns to the blonde woman and sees that, under the colored rotating lights, the young woman's face is completely white. "Are you okay?" She considers it the stupidest question she's asked all week.

"Another - I – I have to – to get out of here."

Taking her arm, O'Mallory turns and cuts their way through the crowd that has expanded behind them. They quickly reach a secluded spot beside the Restaurant, near the linked fence but out of sight of the lot.

"It - it's -." It takes many moments for the woman to recover enough to speak. She looks up at the Priest with haunted eyes. "How much of what happened in Clarkston Lakes did Agent McGee tell you?"

"Just bits and pieces in the car."

Dawn takes a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. "How's your stomach?"

O'Mallory knows she's about to find out.

x

The Police have already established a perimeter about the bodies, keeping everyone out of the lot and yellow 'Crime Scene' tape stretches across the wide front entrance, preventing any access to the bodies of Albert and Nikita Morrison.

The sun has already set, casting the lot into heavy shadow, and while the high beams of the headlights illuminate the bodies, the flashing colors of the rotating lights on the Police RMPs do nothing to aid the scene. Ducky asks the Sergeant to have them turned off. When the MCR truck arrives, there'll be floodlights to set up.

"Okay, Doctor." The Officer-in-Charge of the scene has worked with Mallard before but that doesn't save him from a scathing commentary upon the police having touched the bodies to determine identity. A Navy Captain and his wife are in NCIS' jurisdiction, but it'd probably been safer for the officers had they gone through their own ME.

Ducky draws his ire to an early close. He's quite put out, not because of a missed social occasion but because any moving of the bodies is a disturbance of evidence.

x

As the lighting steadies, now only under the beams of two cars from wide angles, Ducky can begin his examination of the bloody corpses.

Little can be seen of the man's prone body under his wife's, while the vast amount of blood from her ripped and shredded neck has soaked much of the area. Her body lies draped across her husband's, the downward angle of her upper body allowing her blood to flow to cover him and all else. On her back lies a particularly gruesome weapon.

"Looks like whoever did it tried to cut her head off with that thing," McGee speculates, pausing in his collecting of pictures with his cell phone. Nearby, Abby circles the area, using her own camera phone to document the scene.

"That it does, my boy," Ducky replies grimly, stepping as close to the bodies as he can and coming down to balance on the balls of his feet just outside the pooled blood as Tim resumes his own documenting of the bodies.

"Don't worry, my friends," he tells them softly. "We will determine who has reduced you to this state - and why."


	2. Dragonclaw and the Flamebird

Chapter Two  
Dragonclaw and the Flamebird

Gibbs and Palmer arrive almost simultaneously, the latter driving the ME truck. Gibbs must await the MCR truck driven by a Beta shift agent. When the big vehicle obtains right-of-way through the crowd, the team quickly sets up the powerful floodlights about the bodies without interrupting the work of Ducky and his Assistant. By the time the area is illuminated to near-noontime intensity, the investigation is well along.

Abby had returned to the scene seconds before Gibbs had arrived, having given her apologies to Dawn Caldwell and Siobhan O'Mallory. The pair will wait in the Restaurant's lounge for Abby, whose true labors will be in her lab, so she will depart early, driving Dawn back to her apartment and Siobhan to hers three blocks from 'St. Mary the Virgin' Church. She will then going on to her lab in the Navy Yard. She hopes she'll be able to get back to her friend before it gets too late into the night.

Full dark in the first weekend of September doesn't offer much hope.

x

"What can you tell me, Ducky?"

"That this was a particularly nasty way to go." The tuxedoed man tells him, looking up from where he's crouched before the bodies and trying not to feel like James Bond or some old time Secret Agent, wearing formal attire to a Crime Scene.

"The spray of blood indicates her assailant was standing there." He points to two void spots where the widely spread blood is not present, save for a short splice of red. "The blood covered everything in a 360 degree range _except_ for that one area, where it was blocked by her attacker's legs, save for the thin space where it slipped between.

"The patterning is consistent with his having braced himself before pulling upon the weapon, which whipped about her neck to slice almost through her spine. The vertebrae are nicked in the back of her neck, where the force of the pull was greatest."

Unfortunately, when Gibbs looks about, he can see no bloody footprints. They could not get that lucky so soon.

"Ever see a weapon like this?"

"Sadly, I have not."

"It's 'Dragonclaw'," Jimmy tells them from his position on the other side of the bodies, the words coming out automatically while he is taking measurements. He only realizes belatedly that he'd spoken out of turn, too belatedly to do him any good.

"I beg your pardon?" Ducky asks, more surprised by the information than the interruption.

"Well, I - uh -," Jimmy tries to stop stammering uncomfortably, "that is, I recognize it - from a book."

"Indeed?"

"Well, yes, it looks - that is, the book describes it and this looks exactly like -," he is uncomfortable, being in the odd position of telling _Ducky_ something obscure. He pulls himself to a stop and then tells them definitely: "The weapon's called 'Dragonclaw'."

x

"And what _is_ dragonclaw?" Gibbs pushes.

"Well, 'Dragonclaw' is…" he knows he's stuck, absolutely nothing will get him out of this situation until he tells all he knows, so he decides to 'bite the bullet' and tell them. "I read a novel once, a 'Sword and Sorcery' story and there was this Assassin called 'Eldrad' and one of his weapons was 'Dragonclaw'. It whips about the neck or some other body part and just slices it off. This -," he points to the curled, flexible jointed blades, "- is _exactly_ how 'Dragonclaw' was described."

"Well done, Mr. Palmer."

"Thank you, Doctor." He's thrilled to be able to impress his mentor.

"Now, would you care to take a stab," Ducky indicates the end of the arrow protruding from the man's back, at the same time mentally apologizing for the horrendous pun, "at this?"

"Well, I…" Jimmy tries to place it, unsuccessfully. Following his obscure identification of 'Dragonclaw', he's embarrassed not to have a quick answer. The end of the shaft is unusual, not just feathers....

"It's Legolas Thranduilion's arrow," McGee says from near the feet of the man. They all turn to him. "That is, I recognize it. Legolas - or 'Greenleaf' - is an Elf- an Elvan King actually, one of the characters that assist Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy."

"_Tolkien_ wrote 'Lord of the Rings'," Gibbs tells him sharply, amazed that the man, a published writer of thus far two successful novels, can make such a blunder.

"I know, boss, but Jackson directed it." Into Gibbs' hard look, he explains: "From 2001 through 2003 they made a series of 3 movies. This _design_ of the arrow from those movies is very distinctive. I know you don't get to the movies, but they even won a collective Academy Awar…." His voice trails off when he realizes his situation is just getting worse.

"_Where_ would someone get Eldrad's Dragonclaw and Legolas' arrows?"

"Specialty houses?" Palmer guesses.

"On-line and published catalogues," McGee speculates.

"Fantasy conventions."

"Re-creation shops."

"Collectables dealers."

Gibbs holds up his hands.

"What's wrong, Jethro?" Ducky asks, holding back a smile.

"I've seen a lot of scary things in my time ... but Palmer and the 'Elf Lord' working the same wavelength – _that's_ scary."

x

"What about witnesses?" Gibbs asks McGee. This, at least, is a 'safe' topic.

"There's no parking lot attendant, it's self-service; but passers-by reported hearing screams. They told the restaurant doorma–"

Jimmy Palmer, crouched opposite Ducky, topples backward. Ducky snatches his arm before he falls, steadies him.

Palmer has his hands pressed to his face. He lowers them, shakes his head sharply.

"Are you all right, Mr. Palmer?"

"I'm fine. I think." He shakes his head harder. "I'm not sure."

"Is it your blood sugar?" It's been a while since the man has had a diabetic reaction, but certainly he's had nothing so severe that Ducky can recall.

"Shouldn't be. I tested an hour ago. Su Lin ...." He tries to clear his head again.

"Who?"

Jimmy works to focus. "Who?"

"You mentioned a lady's name." Jimmy looks at him vaguely. "Sue Lynn."

"Who?"

"Mister Palmer, when we return, you are receiving a thorough physical."

"That's not ne–." He wilts under Ducky's glare. "Yes, doctor."

x

"Where are the witnesses?" Gibbs asks McGee, continuing from before the distraction.

"No one was held. The doorman looked in back here and called the police, but he's the only one here. He told us a car had pulled out before he came around, but it didn't speed away or do anything else. He hadn't paid enough attention before he saw the bodies."

"Wonderful. And what were _you_ doing?" he demands, taking note of their attire. McGee and Mallard sport tuxedos, Abby's gown is even more distinctive. He had noticed earlier - it was hard not to - but he'd put this unusual situation aside while dealing with important matters.

"Mother O'Mallory and I couldn't get in," McGee tells him, "The lot was closed but I didn't see any police cars here then, so we parked about two blocks away." They had probably been on site, but with their distinctive lights off.

"So did Dawn and I," Abby reports, "except we got closer. We got here a few minutes before them."

Gibbs looks down at Ducky. "Oh, I was here already." He points to the opposite corner, where his vintage Morgan stands out distinctively among the modern models.

"And _none_ of you were stopped at the door? A Field Agent and a Forensic Scientist and neither of you were told anything was wrong?"

"Gibbs," Abby points to her black gown with its generous décolletage, "does _this _look like a police uniform?"

xxx

It takes more than an hour for the team, now including DiNozzo and David, to withdraw. By then night has fallen hard but the true Investigation is just beginning. Now, by computers and telephones and microscopes and scalpels, they'll to learn why Albert and Nikita Morrison had died.

Gibbs, at his desk, tries to track information on Captain Morrison, growing more curious by the moment. Over a year ago the man had dropped off the face of the Earth. He lets his team have an hour before calling for their reports while he hits one roadblock after another. Then, at the appropriate second: "What have you got, DiNozzo?"

"Captain Albert Morrison is stationed at Norfolk at an R&D facility," the man reports crisply. "That is, he received orders posting him there over a year ago. Since then his cell phone's been cancelled and I haven't found so much as a hit on his credit card; not even for gas, only the wife's. I'm running down a list of his associates now. Rather I'm trying to, I haven't found anyone yet. Nikita Morrison is employed by Ballantine Books as a Senior Editor, and she's as easy to trace as he is hard. Ziva's running her down."

"Do we know which one was the killer's target?"

"My money's on Nikita."

"Why?"

"She heads up the Fantasy - read 'Sword and Sorcery' - division."

"All right, why?"

"I was afraid you were going to ask that. It's Friday night."

"_And_? You have a hot date, DiNozzo?"

"If I did, you'd be the first to know." He does not meet his boss' eyes, however, strictly true though the words are. In recent weeks, he'd made the decision that when it came to time spent with Jeanne, Gibbs or any of his other associates would be the _last_ to know. He wouldn't lie, he'd just never mention it. "The point is her staff might. It's Labor Day weekend as if you haven't noticed and offices are locked up tighter than drums until Tuesday - all except this one," he finishes sotto vocé.

"You bucking for a long weekend?" His tone clearly carries the threat that it is liable to be a _very_ long one, on some very unpleasant lines.

"No, boss."

"Good." He turns to McGee, annoyed that the man is still working in his tuxedo. "What about 'Dragon Claw?"

x

"I found eleven on-line shops where you can purchase it, ranging anywhere from $99.95 to $195 – not counting Amazon, where someone lists a resale for $69.99."

"It's a _deadly weapon_, McGee."

"It lists as a 'Fantasy Re-creation' and labeled 'For Entertainment Purposes only'." McGee directs his computer feed to the large plasma screen, where he pages through a staggering collection of edged weapons. Gibbs stands up, stepping closer to the screen, though not blocking anyone else's view. McGee sets his computer to automatic and joins his boss.

His flashing display continues at one second intervals, never less than three weapons to a screen. "Individual states have restrictions on some _specific_ pieces, but on the whole you can get anything shipped anywhere for as little as 10 or 15 dollars. You're just ... not supposed to use it."

"Incredible." Ziva marvels after two score screens have flashed past. "You can apply for a gun permit and take weeks clearing the paperwork, or you can get one of these things in the mail in two or three days."

As they watch in amazement the selection passes through an astounding collection of ornate and elegant swords and then moves on to daggers and other smaller hand held weapons. They show a staggering variety of design and range in size from a few inches to more than a foot in length - all deadly.

"How many are there?"

"In the 'Fantasy' category alone, the collective market refers to over two thousand different varieties. Some of them are beautiful pieces, practically works of art."

Gibbs does not care for the admiring tone in his voice. "Ever buy one, Elf Lord?"

"N - no, boss." He's astounded Gibbs would even ask. Gibbs turns to DiNozzo.

"No way."

He looks back to Ziva. "I prefer easily concealed things," the woman assures him. He's not certain, considering the vast variety of sizes and types of weapons being displayed, if this 'answer' makes him feel comfortable.

He turns back to McGee. "But you could."

"Sure."

"Even without a background check." He's not sure he wants to believe the man.

"All I need is a credit card."

"Business hours?"

"Most of the big shops are 24/7, phone customer service, many with 800 numbers."

Gibbs reaches into his pocket, withdraws his wallet and pulls out a card, hands it to McGee. "You're me. Buy one. Make it imaginative, easily concealed, sharp and _illegal_, so simple an amateur could kill with it. Have them ship it here, FedEx overnight. I want it by tomorrow afternoon."

"You got it." Returning to his keyboard, he cuts off the astounding display, narrows the search parameters and in less than a minute he's on the phone.

x

Gibbs returns his attention to Ziva. "What do you have on Mrs. Morrison?"

"I hocked the employee database; nothing remark–"

"Hacked," DiNozzo corrects.

"Yes, 'hacked'." She doesn't appreciate being cut off, looks as though she wants to hack something of DiNozzo's. "She has been with the company fourteen years, promoted last year to Senior Editor of the 'Fantasy' division. Last year her division published 31 novels and 27 Anthologies, 3 of which made the 'Best Seller' list. Company profits for her division rose 1.3 percent last year due to increased circulation."

"Anyone have a beef with her?"

"Tim can tell you more about the book publishing business than I can. I understand most of the big Houses publish less than 1 percent of what is submitted each year, so I am going to go out on a branch and say 'yes'."

"Limb." Gibbs glares at him. "Shutting up, boss."

"Let's not forget Captain Morrison." His emphasis is to remind them that the Captain is their true lock on jurisdiction. If Mrs. Morrison was the intended victim and the Captain just 'got in the way', then the scales _might _tip to Metro Homicide. Gibbs doesn't want that to happen. Nikita is still family, so he wants jurisdiction to stay firmly with NCIS.

"I'm having trouble tracking him down." Tony reminds him. Considering the wall he'd hit, Gibbs has no doubt 'trouble' is a restrained understatement. "I have him in Norfolk R&D, but I can't find out what he was R'ing or D'ing."

"What _do_ you have?"

"He's there, he's big and he's T.S."

"Top Secret, huh?" This sounds like something he can go to the Director with to keep the ball in their court - even if Nikita Morrison does turn out to be the target.

"Got it, boss," McGee says, leaving his desk and coming over to them. Gibbs checks his watch.

"You were on less than three minutes."

x

"I got you a 'Flamebird'." He hands Gibbs a paper.

"And _what_ is a 'Flamebird'?"

"I'd call it an Assassin's weapon." He holds his hand upward, points to his wrist just below the edge of his tuxedo sleeve. "A black leather strap snaps about your wrist to hold what's essentially a long dagger, except it's carved to look like a flame, three inches wide by eight long overall. Very elegant, it even comes with three-color tinting in the metal to resemble flame. It rests along the length of your palm, from wrist to fingertip. Keep your hand down at your side, it's concealed. Tilt your hand back and the blade's exposed. Then you pull out, drop your hand and walk away."

"And how much did this cost me?"

"With tax, $31.40 plus $7.90 Priority Shipping, FedEx, Saturday delivery. You'll have it here by tomorrow afternoon."

"And all you needed was my card?" This is outrageous.

"And your home address to confirm billing."

"Incredible." He holds out his hand, receives his card and returns it to his wallet. "They didn't even ask what 'I' was going to do with it?"

"It's sold for 'Entertainment Purposes only'. 'You're' not _supposed_ to actually use it on anybody."

"But they're not going to check on that."

McGee shrugs. As far as the company is concerned, the transaction is over. "They trust you."

Gibbs gives him a deadly look. "I wouldn't."

xxx

When Gibbs strides into the Autopsy, he's relieved - though hardly surprised - to see that Ducky had changed out of his tuxedo in favor of scrubs. It's disconcerting enough seeing McGee in his formals, but he can hardly fault the man. He could have directed the Agent to change, but a random mixture of available casual wear and tuxedo would've been worse.

"What can you tell me, Ducky?" He and Palmer stand on either side of the unclothed and face down body of Captain Albert Morrison. On the table behind Palmer lies the equally unclothed though supine body of his wife.

The cause of the woman's death is obvious. Her neck is shredded to the bone where the multiple blades had wrapped twice about, while the detail of her husband's death is hardly obscure either.

"The arrow, which you saw and which Abby is even now testing, was twenty eight inches in length from notch to very point and buried itself almost completely through our unfortunate friend's body. It missed the spine because of the angle of the insertion, pierced his heart almost dead center and came three quarters of an inch from penetrating the body completely." He pulls off his bloodied latex gloves, tosses them into the bin at the body's feet.

"Judging from the positions of the bodies when found, the arrow was fired in an easterly direction, which puts the shooter near the restaurant wall. I'd say that to get this much penetration it would require at least 150 pounds of pressure on the bow."

"Right through the heart. What do you think - skill or a lucky shot?"

"Oh, with that much force achieving almost complete penetration, it hardly makes a difference. If you're asking if you are looking for a skilled marksman rather than one who is lucky to hit the broad side of the proverbial barn, I'd have to say all he had to do was get it between shoulders and waist to hit a vital organ. Now I knew a fellow once who was especially skilled with a bow. He used to do competition shooting and–"

"What about the wife?" Gibbs asks, not wanting a long dissertation at 11:00 at night. It's approaching the time when he's going to have to turn his Agents loose if he expects productive work out of them in the morning.

"Well, Nikita Morrison," Ducky continues as he leads Gibbs around the table, "was the victim of an especially gruesome weapon as you saw, a 'Dragonclaw' according to Mr. Palmer." He gives due credit to the silent man. "From the position of the wounds," he points to the shredded neck sliced all the way to the bone, "she appears to have been on her knees when she was struck." He points at the upper left side of her neck

"The initial blade entered here, and as it wrapped about, each succeeding blade was a bit lower, encircling her throat twice. Then a powerful pull _ripped_ her flesh apart to cause this damage. The bones," he points to the back of her neck, "were nicked by the force of the blades as they tore through her neck, leaving only her vertebrae to hold her head on."

He looks up at his friend and Gibbs can read the sympathy in his eyes. "Captain Morrison's death was just as instantaneous as his wife's, but I dare say hers was considerably more painful."


	3. The Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart Also

Chapter Three  
The sword shall pierce your heart also.

Timothy McGee kisses Ziva gently, their bodies move in concert upon her bed, their lovemaking tender and unhurried. But for all their close intimacy, for all their love, there is something missing and their end is far more quiet than the impassioned experiences they have known. It's late, well after 2:00, but that's not the reason. As they slow to where they are holding one another, Tim tells her softly; "Zee, that was the _lonliest_ lovemaking I can ever remember."

She sighs; "I am sorry, my heart just is not in it."

"Oh, I could tell."

She looks up at him and not only is there no passion, there's no joy in her eyes. "Tim, if I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?"

He's astonished. In all the time he has known her he's always been honest with her, or at lea t he believes he has. That honesty comes to both their professional and their presently 'unprofessional' relationship. That she feels she has to 'arrange' the truth hurts. "I've always been honest with you, Zee."

"That was before." She sits up, fixes him with a piercing stare "Now, suddenly, part of me is scared. I am scared you will have a motive to lie and I will not be able to tell."

"Zee...."

"Gibbs had once told me that you is not like my father or Ari, that you do not know _how _to lie. Then you had a motive to lie, you were trying to save your career."

"I didn't lie then."

"I know. But now you have a stronger motive, you are more experienced and you know what an investigator would look for and I ... I am afraid."

"Of what?"

"That you will lie and I will prefer the lie so much more than the truth that I will turn off every skill I have and just believe you."

x

He pulls her closer and she lets him. This alone tells him the depth of her distress. She makes no effort to hold him and there is no passion in her. She just lets him do it.

But love is overwhelmed by a darker emotion, so much so that she seems unable to express either. This admission is something he knows has cost her a lot.

"Zee, what are you afraid of?" It's hard for him to imagine this woman being afraid of anything.

"I am worried that – I have seen for weeks what Abby is doing. She wants you, Tim." She feels his body slump, more in frustration than anything else.

"Zee, let me worry about that, please. I know it's–"

"That is not what is bothering me. I mean, that is aggravating as well, and if it were anyone but a fellow NCIS Agent I would wipe the floor with her - and she is walking a pretty fine line lately as it is. But that is not what is bothering me. I know how you feel, and I trust you."

"Thank you. But th–"

"Is there anything going on between you and Siobhan O'Mallory?"

x

Her rushed words leave him stunned. "No!" He pushes away, sits up. "Zee, why would you ask that?"

"I have seen the way you look at her. You got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to her when she called. _Y__ou brought her into NCIS_; you–" He holds up his hand, silencing her rush.

"Zee, whatever I had with Siobhan ended years ago. We're just friends. I talked her into joining NCIS because I thought it was a good thing, professionally, for _all _of us. But whatever we had, years ago, _ended _years ago. And since she's a Priest it's going to _stay_ ended!"

"Episcopal Priests can get married, have families–"

"_Not_ with _me_," he declares definitely. Romantic thoughts of Shav, romantic memories, are something he is definitely keeping 'at arm's length', a line he _will not_ cross. Ever since he had seen her, for the first time in years, at the rear of a procession - in his own church - he had decided that 'look but don't touch' is the only rule that can ever apply between them.

"Zee, I can't _believe _you're asking me this. This is a _professional_ relationship. I am not seeing her socially–" He realizes that telling her what happened at La Chateau Julienne would be a horrendous mistake. There is far too much room for misinterpretation. But to _not _tell her would not be a lie, just an omission, one that will keep her from distress and him from–.

"_Did you have sex with her_?"

x

He's stunned; so much so it takes him a moment to realize the point of her impassioned question. "Zee, we were - we were kids; teena–"

She sits up. "_Did you have sex with her_?"

There is more pain than jealousy behind that explosive demand. "Yes."

"How many times?"

He pushes away to give himself some room. "Around a thousand." He's ready, catches her fist before it can connect. "Zee, it was a different _time_, different _lives_. I'm with you, committed to you, and–"

"And you brought your former _girl_friend into–"

"Shall I talk to Director Shepherd again, reverse her decision, separate all the Agents of NCIS from potential help and Spiritual Guidance because–?"

"No, damn it, no!"

"Then the real question is not 'am I going to tell you the truth?' It's 'do you trust me'?"

She drops her hand as he lets it go, feeling the strength behind it vanish. "It is just that so many women–"

"Do you _trust _me?"

It takes her a few seconds. "I trust _you_. I love you." Her emphasis is disquieting.

"Do you trust _Reverend _O'Mallory?" He stresses, as firmly as he can, her position.

Ziva thinks about it - hard. This is a Priest, devoted to God, even if it is to an interpretation of God that she is not used to. She tries to trust. This woman has, to her knowledge, done nothing to warrant her anger or mistrust. And despite her life with Tim so many years ago, she is not Abby.

"No."

xxx

Abby Sciuto sticks her key into her lock, turns it quietly, but as she opens the door she realizes there's little need for stealth. Late as it is, as soon as the door opens she hears the choral strains of Byrd's 'In Tempore Paschali' coming from the radio on the large bookcase near her black leather couch. She's neither surprised nor does she mind that her friend has 'usurped' her radio for a Classical station.

Much of her décor in this room is black: the curtains, the furniture, even the artwork on the walls are paint on black velvet. In the midst of this Dawn Caldwell, with her long blonde hair and pale blue nightshirt, is a spot of bright color. "Hi, Sunshine," Abby greets her softly, closing the door. It's well after 2:00, she'd expected the younger woman to be long ago asleep on the couch.

"How'd it go?"

"Okay." She doesn't feel up to small talk. "Sunshine, I'm really _sorry_."

"Hey, don't be," Dawn gets off the couch, the sleep shirt reaching down well past her bare knees, more like a dress on her. She's quite at odds with her hostess, who still wears her black gown. "I had a good time with Mother O'Mallory, we went to Mickey D's."

"That must've raised some eyebrows, the two of you in cocktail gowns."

"It was a blast - everyone stared. And the last time I was here, you were working on _my_ case. I knew before coming that there was a 50/50 chance we weren't going to get all of the weekend together. I don't mind."

Abby reaches out, hugging her friend. "Thank you. I was feeling so bad."

"Don't fret it. Maybe tomorrow, if you have to go in, can you wrangle me a Visitor's pass?"

"Count on it."

They sit together on the couch, Dawn tucking her legs up so the nightshirt tents tightly. "So - if you're all going to be tied up … how long?"

"I _wish_ I knew. This has all the makings of a weird, drawn out one, I can feel it in my bones." The music, coming from the tall bookshelf beside the couch, changes to Haydn's 'The Creation'. Dawn sits back, shifting her legs to curl them so her bare feet are tucked under her, relieving the strain on her nightshirt and she allows the music to guide her to a pleasant speculation.

"I guess that means your delectable Timothy McGee will be tied up too, so it will be hard to have you set me up a date?" The look Abby gives her is pure fire and she draws back apprehensively. "What'd I say?"

"Nothing," Abby sighs. "I'm just tired. It's nothing."

Dawn doesn't believe a word of it. Her friend's tone is completely at odds with her words, and the murderous glare with both. "No, no, I know that look. That was definitely not 'nothing'."

"Just never mind, okay? Besides, he's seeing someone; it wouldn't work out with you. He's … a one-woman guy." She sighs and slaps the leather cushion slightly harder than she'd wanted to.

"Yeah, I can see the way he was with that new Chaplain of yours." Dawn says with a lecherous smile.

"It's not like _that_," Abby tells her, shaking her head. She wishes Tim _were_ fixated on the redheaded woman, it would be far preferable and easier for her own chances. "They're old friends, _they used_ to date a long, long time ago, but he has far too much respect for her."

"Too much respect to date an Episcopal Priest?" Something's wrong with the thought, but she can't place it. "I've heard they can even get married and have kids."

"He has far too much respect for _any_ woman to two-time anyone." She can't keep bitterness from her voice.

"Then you're saying I don't have a shot?" Dawn teases and backs away from the murderous look in Abby's hard eyes. "_What_?"

"_Nothing_!" Abby snaps with poisonous bite, starting to get off the couch. Of all things, she never thought her friend would become her competition in a war she was losing!

Dawn grabs her sleeve at just the right moment to make her lose her balance and fall back onto the couch. "What's wrong?"

"Told you, Sunshine, nothing." Abby does not want to fight, not her best friend and certainly not over _this_.

"Then why do you look like you want to bite me?"

Abby sighs. "Look, I'm sorry. It's nothing. I've had a hard evening. _N__othing_ about this weekend is working out like I wanted it to and I'm taking it out on you. I'm sorry. Can we just _forget_ I said anything and enjoy what little of this weekend we can salvage together?"

Dawn looks deeply into her tired eyes, searches, thinks it over.

"No."

x

"_What_?"

"Come on, Vampirstein," Dawn is the only one who can use that nickname with impunity, "you've been there for me all my life - this Summer even more so. You risked more than I can know to help me when I needed you, riding to the rescue and facing down God knows what to save me. You got _suspended_ because of me."

"I didn't really."

She won't be put off. "We've both spent enough in long distance phone bills to own pieces of Cingular. I know you as well as you know me." She comes up on the couch, turns to kneel on the cushion beside her friend and she presses her hands to Abby's shoulders, 'trapping' her. "What's _wrong_?"

Abby sighs, giving up. "I'm in love," she admits morosely.

x

Surprise makes Dawn ease her pressure on her friend's shoulders. "That's _bad_?" She'd expected a far more tragic revelation.

"It is when the guy who's keeping me from sleeping, eating or anything else used to be hotter than fire for me - so hot it scared me off and I had him cool it. And now he's dating someone _else _and I realize I was a colossal _jerk _to send him away and now he loves me like a sister."

"Ohhh," Dawn groans, letting go of Abby and sitting down on the black couch beside her. "There is nothing_ worse_ than being loved 'like a sister'."

But there is and it's in the bomb Abby drops. "Then I wrangle a dinner invite without _her _and he brings his _former _girlfriend, who he has managed to talk the Director into hiring into NCIS as our Chaplain."

Dawn is stunned as the full concussion of the bomb hits her. "Holy shit," she breathes, recognizing the principle players in this lopsided rectangle. "Now _that _is screwed."

x

"And I certainly can't blame Siobhan - Reverend O'Mallory - who's a wonderful person and is so far out of his life that she'd never even _think _of it."

Dawn is not about to undermine that confidence. "What are you going to do?"

"He's been dating Ziva David from work for months, you met her at Clarkston Lakes; she's the one who interviewed you, the one you saw on stage."

"I didn't like her." She'll always remember that 'interview' with particular distaste.

"I doubt I ever did, long before she stole Tim away from me, snatched him up while I was on vacation. But I've _told_ him how I feel, _shown_ him how I feel. I've been _fighting _for him and scoring some pretty good victories. I almost won him back–" she stops, unable to endure the embarrassment and unable to lie to her best friend. She had not 'won' _anything_; only utterly humiliated herself and him as well. "But he's asked me to stop and I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't do what he asks and just be happy for them."

"You'll never be 'happy for them'." Dawn knows her far too well. When Abby Sciuto sets her heart on something, particularly romance, she does not give in. "But I've met these people only a few times and then from your stories. I can see things from an 'informed outsider's' perspective; so maybe I have an advantage."

Abby shakes her head and her voice is heavy with irony. "This from the Munchkin who came to me for advice about a training bra."

"I haven't needed a training bra in a lot of years," Dawn reminds her.

"No, you haven't." That little girl is long ago gone. The woman beside her _teaches_ girls like that now. "So what's your advice?"

"Let him go."

x

She holds up her hands against Abby's anger. "What are you doing except hurting yourself and looking for ways to hurt them and their relationship? That is _not _the Abby I know and love. You're driving him away. Take a step back; let it be. If they're wrong for each other, it'll die on its own and you'll be there to pick up the pieces. If they're right for each other, nothing you can do can break it and they'll just come to resent you for trying. And if you _succeed _- well, I wouldn't want to be you when that happens."

Abby understands her friend's inner message. She had not said 'I wouldn't want to be in your shoes facing the consequences of that split'. She had said 'I wouldn't want to be the kind of person you would be to do such a thing to two friends'.

"Neither would I," she admits softly.

xxx

Jimmy Palmer enters his apartment, barely able to keep his eyes open well enough to find the keyhole. It takes him two tries to get the key in. Pushing his door closed, he leans against it and yawns hugely. Too tired to focus on his clock, not _wanting _to know the time, he pulls his shirt up and off along with his tee shirt, both flipped inside out. Walking, he shoves his shoes off with each foot, then tugs off his pants; about to let everything drop one by one on the path to his bedroom. But 'reeducation' by his girlfriend has almost cured him of that bachelor habit. Leaving his shoes on the trail and his pants draped over the back of a chair - he hasn't been 'cured' by that much - he takes the shirts to his walk-in closet, opens the door, turns on the light, puts them into the hamper, nods to Michelle Lee wearing a tiny sheer red bra and thong, turns off the light, closes the door and walks toward his bedroom.

x

He gets four steps and stops; hesitating with the sense that something out of the ordinary has happened. There's something his sleep-shrouded mind is trying to tell him. Thinking about it, concluding he has to be wrong but deciding he ought to check, he turns and goes back to the closet, opening the door apprehensively, not really ready to believe in what he thinks he's seen.

"Hi." Michelle's voice burns the air as she steps out. She's 'wearing' the outer frame of a scarlet bra, only the thinnest of red strands cuddling each of her breasts in an 'X', holding a tiny heart not quite covering each pink nipple. An equally thin thong reaches down to spread, 'teardrop' fashion, to cup her shaved vulva before disappearing again. The room and her tone are equally torrid as she puts her arms about his neck, drawing him down.

"'Chelle, what are y–" Her red lips keep him from asking what, he realizes, is an astoundingly stupid question. Putting his arms about her scorching body as she presses close to him, he knows he can forget about sleep.

He does not mind one bit.

xx

Jimmy feels a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. "Come _on, _it's time to get _up_."

He peels his eyes open. Without his glasses, everything is a blur and he reaches for his night table, finds where he'd set them against the dangers of the night and pulls them on. The sight of Michelle sitting on the bed beside him, her bare body glowing in the bright morning sunlight, her hair artfully disarrayed and his remembrance that he is responsible for that disarray, are the only things that make him willing to face the light of day. He sighs, "I've _been_ up," he reminds her.

"I know, but now it's time to get in."

He reaches for her shoulder, tugs her down onto her back beside him, moving to cover her. "_I'll say_."

She giggles, having known exactly what he was going to do and very much in favor of it. She doesn't stop him as he holds her down, his lips first pressed to hers, then slipping down to light upon her pink nipple. "But I mean to work," she admonishes uselessly, moaning as a flare of pleasure shoots from his tongue all the way to her toes.

"This _is _work. I touch naked bodies almost every day." He sucks lightly, licking, feeling her nipple harden in response between his lips as she moans. She's gasping in delight as he reaches for her vulva. "Not one of them responds like you do," he assures her, words muffled by her breast.

She laughs. "Aren't you glad about _that_?" She moans as he does something particularly skillful with his tongue.

"_Oh_ yeah!" He pets her as he seeks her most sensitive nub. She spreads her legs wider, giving him more room, welcoming him. "You're the only one I want to respond when I do _this_!"

She gives a sharp, high cry; exactly the one he'd hoped for, so he does it again, more slowly, more sensuously, making her writhe helplessly under him.

xxx

Carla Stratton jogs out Gate 3/3A of Naval Station Norfolk, waving to the Sentry in the booth before starting along the side of Interstate 564. She feels her muscles loosen as she runs, feels her blood quicken. She'd started this daily routine long before Boot Camp - it was one of the things that had gotten her through that ordeal twelve years ago. Since then, every morning between 8:00 and 9:00, rain, shine, blistering heat or heavy blizzard she's out here, or outside some other base, running. That in a USN gray half halter and blue painted-on gym shorts she risks causing multi-car pile-ups – well, people need the mental discipline to concentrate better on their driving. She's only testing that discipline.

It becomes interesting, however, to realize that in the summers she gets to recognize the same cars that pass at particular times of the morning. She's wondered occasionally just how many drivers actually work in destinations reached via this highway.

She keeps judiciously to the far right edge. She'd nearly been clipped too many times, particularly in the hotter mornings, by cars that _for some reason_ tend to drift toward her side.

The warm-up completed, she increases her pace, lets the road slip by under her. She enjoys the feel of her muscles loosening, flowing, her movements becoming more fluid as she runs. Increasing her pace more, she slips into her fantasy of actually challenging the cars and trucks that shoot by her at 65 miles per hour, maybe someday winning.

She hears another engine behind her, particularly loud and distinct from the rest of the traffic, approaching fast. This one's a motorcycle coming up quickly, skimming the traffic in her lane as she increases her pace, hugging the far right, knowing he's going to zip past her. She glances back at the onrushing vehicle, makes sure it'll pass far enough away to avoid hitting her. He'll get a treat as he passes, the sight of her bouncing breasts loosely confined in her sports bra and she wonders if he'll stay on a straight course ahead.

The engine comes faster, louder as she runs harder. It flashes by and agonizing pain sears her back, shoots through her. The staggering impact drives her forward, she flies off her feet.

Airborne, she can't believe the long bloody steel blade jutting out of her chest. She crashes to the pavement but never feels herself bounce and roll wildly. The pain was a brief thing.

She's dead before her body rolls to a stop.


	4. Hyrkanian Steel

Chapter Four  
Hyrkanian steel

Tony DiNozzo rides the elevator to Operations, still basking in the glow of the night. It's not easy juggling two half-lives, and when the red Psych Ward band about his wrist had been replaced by one of platinum, keeping the halves separate grew significantly harder. But he's up to the challenge - _any _challenge.

It's well for him that he has such a wellspring of self-faith, for when the elevator doors open his three colleagues are on the other side. McGee and David each grab an arm in passing, his half-step forward becomes several back. "Good morning to you, too."

"Dead Navy Lieutenant outside Norfolk," Gibbs informs him, pushing the lowermost button.

Ziva is more forthcoming when the doors close. "She was jogging beside I-564. Nearest they can tell, she was killed by a passing vehicle."

Unfortunate, but hardly a Major Case Response Team callout, unless.... "Lemme guess. She's R&D."

"You got it," McGee assures him.

"Think it's the same 'hitter'?"

"You tell us, DiNozzo," Gibbs says. "She was impaled through the back with a sword."

xxx

The body of Lieutenant Carla Stratton lies on the side of Interstate 564. The right lane is blocked to allow room for the Investigators to work, which causes early morning commuters to make their displeasure quite vocal. Several Military Police vehicles have been positioned well before the trail of evidence leading to the body, plenty of space on the side of the road reserved for the collection of evidence.

Highway Patrol had responded to the initial calls. It was unamazing to the skeptical among them how many had reported the killing and how few had remained to render aid or volunteer information. The tally is many and none.

Finding the victim to have come from Naval Station Norfolk two miles down the road, they'd passed on the report and secured the scene without any of the tedious jurisdictional squabbles so prevalent in the higher ranks. By the time NCIS rolls up, Naval MPs have taken and are ready to surrender charge.

Gibbs can see that they don't want to, this victim one of their own. But they know that, for the case to be solved quickly, it must be put into the hands of the detectives.

x

The woman's body has not been moved. She lies on her side, arms and legs bent in uncomfortable positions were she alive, scraped and dirty from her rolling fall. That roll had been disrupted by the foot of steel that juts out of the middle of her chest. Her head is bent backward, her blonde hair spills across her face and a pool of blood covers the paved road shoulder about her.

Gibbs' first concern, while his team collects physical and photographic evidence, is to interview the MPs and Highway Patrol officers. Gibbs approaches a Petty Officer Third Class, equivalent to a Marine Corporal; late twenties with the look of eagles so prevalent among Navy or Marine personnel. "Tell me about her, Jacobson," Gibbs instructs, reading the ID unobtrusively enough that it seems he knows the man.

"Well, sir, I can tell you what you've already worked out; this was no random attack. Some guy didn't just say to himself 'I think I'll pack a sword in my car and stab the first jogger I see.' He knew she was going to be here, sir."

"How did he know?"

"She's here every morning. 0800 she leaves the base, 0830 she turns back, she's through the gate at 0900, shower, breakfast, at her post by 1000. You can set the Station clocks by any of those points."

Much as Gibbs appreciates predictability, in Stratton's case it was not an advantage. "What do you know of her that's not in the files?"

"Not a lot to tell, sir. She's part of a Special Unit, I don't know much about it or her. She's Navy, but not quite the same as us; Special Operations beyond Special Ops. The regular guys can get assigned to guard the place, but no one gets in without Special Clearance - and getting an Audience with the Pope is easier.

"She doesn't socialize much with the rest of us; none of them do. Once they're in Bunker 1, they're there until they come out."

"So you don't know her?"

"Not personally, she's just a file. There's tens of thousands of people, long term and transient. Norfolk is 17 square kilometers; hard to know them all."

"_Anyone_ know her, Petty Officer?"

"I know she doesn't _date _much, because she seems to have one rule. You want to ask her out, you keep up with her - and you don't come back winded."

"Around here, I'd don't expect that's a problem."

"Oh it isn't. But she's very good, a marathoner who can hold her wind in flat out sprints, but she doesn't fail to let you see that she's better than you. She'll work up to your best speed, push you to the wall and then take off like a jackrabbit. Once or twice of that is one thing, too many times and word gets around. Soon no one wants to play."

x

"She wasn't well liked?"

Jacobsen looks around. "Far be it from me to speak ill of an Officer - or of the dead - but she didn't let you forget she was better than you. Never _said _it, at least not in my hearing; just showed it. She wasn't what I'd call a role model, sir." His tone conveys there is more to the story and Gibbs wants it all.

"How so?"

"Well, sir, an Officer, like say Captain Parker, is supposed to have standards he wants to inspire you to reach, particularly by having them in his own life. But Stratton's standards were unreasonable: she demanded perfection."

"There's nothing wrong with demanding perfection," Gibbs comments as he continues to write.

"No, sir. But begging your pardon, sir, I'm sure you expect perfection as an ideal from your Agents but temper it with the knowledge that you'll never get it. People are flawed; they can't _give _perfection. Most reasonable people realize that and make allowance for it."

"Are you calling me unreasonable, Petty Officer?" Gibbs asks with quiet menace, not glancing up from writing in his pad.

Jacobsen looks at him apprehensively, fearing he has overstepped his bounds; until he sees the incipient smile on the taciturn Agent's lips and relaxes.

"No, sir," he assures Gibbs, recognizing he's been had and giving points for the ploy as the Investigator looks up. "But Lieutenant Stratton couldn't seem to temper her expectations. She wasn't nasty or anything like that - that would fall below the standards of perfection - but she always managed to convey the sense that you were a disappointment."

"So, no one really wanted to fraternize?"

"An Enlisted man fraternizing with an Officer doesn't happen, sir." The look they exchange conveys that the 'Party Line' is alive and well. "But if they did, she wouldn't get many takers. A man doesn't like to feel he's not 'measuring up'."

"Can you think of anyone who'd want to kill her?"

He's surprised by the implication, at least in his face. "No, sir. I can't speak for what happens inside Bunker 1 and I don't know anyone who can, but outside it she never went 'out of her way' to offend anyone. Like I said, that wouldn't be perfection. But not many people associated with her so far as I know. Stories get around. The average man, if he were looking for companionship, just didn't bother to try."

xx

Gibbs, confirming that his team has interviews with other MPs and Highway Patrol well covered, returns to Ducky. He's examining the body of the young woman.

She lies on her right side, canted forward, her arms and legs in the disheveled position she'd landed in following her rolling spill, a fall disrupted by the near foot long shaft of steel jutting outward from between her breasts.

"I'm my own Assistant this morning," Ducky tells him the very obvious before he can even ask for a report. "Mr. Palmer was late this morning for some reason. He's rarely tardy - in fact he's usually in before me and departs long after I have retired - but this morning he seems to have overslept. At least that was what he told me when I called him to divert him here."

"What do you have?"

"Our young friend here," he indicates the still woman between them, "appears to be in her early thirties, no distinguishing marks I can locate at the moment, but I take it you already have a suitable identification."

"Lieutenant Carla Stratton, Special Special Operations."

"And I trust you've determined what makes her operations so special?"

"No idea, yet. That's part two."

"Oh. Well, the cause of death is, as you see, this piece of sharp metal extending from her back through her chest - I measure the blade at 33 ½ inches. Her body is covered on all sides with numerous abrasions doubtlessly received during her presumably spectacular fall. These scrapes," he points them out, "as well as her broken neck, are consistent with an uncontrolled tumbling and rolling fall. As she appears to have made no attempt to protect her head or any other part of her body my conclusion, based upon this and her wound, is that she was dead even before striking the ground." He rises from his crouch.

"As you can see, she fell with such force that the sword actually bent slightly, quite impressive for steel of this thickness and giving adequate indication of the forces involved. The initial direction of the blade was almost straight forward. I theorize her assailant approached in a vehicle and therefore did not have to thrust forward. The posted speed limit is 65 miles per hour, which is more than enough to get this degree of damage."

"The initial spray starts nearly twelve yards back," Gibbs tells him. The area where she lies is awash in blood.

"Yes. She would have been driven forward with great force. And as you can see from the front of her body," he points to where the woman, lying on her side but almost face down, is held off the highway by the blade, "she was sliced side to side as she rolled to a stop."

"Time of death?"

Ducky crouches back down, withdraws and checks the digital readout on the long spiked thermometer that had been buried deep in her side. He compares it to the thermometer clipped to his shirt. "Given the ambient temperature and allowing for a buildup of heat in running nearly two miles from the entrance of the Station, an hour to an hour and a half, certainly no more."

"Put it about 8:00 to 8:30?"

"I would say so."

x

"McGee!" The Agent approaches quickly from down the road, holding his camera. DiNozzo, a few feet closer, joins them. "What do you make of the sword?"

"It looks like a fantasy sword and that bothers me."

"It certainly bothered her," DiNozzo observes and finds that he'd drifted into Gibbs' range. "Thank you, boss."

"Why?" Gibbs asks McGee, ignoring the chastised agent.

"Because I could swear to you I've seen it. I can't place it, but it looks familiar. The pommel, gripe and guard are … I feel I've seen it." He pulls out his blackberry, brings up a picture, then another. "No." Another. "No." He scrolls through the images, becoming more frustrated by the moment.

Gibbs looks at the small images as best he can as they flash by. He decides he will have to take the younger Agent's word until he can see them on a proper screen. Certainly it cannot be for any need of glasses. "Always carry pictures of swords in your thing, 'Elf Lord'?"

"Er, no, boss. But with the identification in the report, I downloaded a load of pictures over wireless link while we were on the way - for comparison. I–" Gibbs holds up his hand, halting the man's uncomfortable admission, his expression showing he'd been 'riding' his friend.

"Well done. Let me know when you find it." He turns up the road.

"I can't find it." McGee reports, having come to the end of the list. "There are thousands of choices; I just don't have the memory for all of them." He glares at DiNozzo.

"I didn't say anything, McGoogle."

"I'll have to get back to my computer to narrow the search."

"When you do ID it," Gibbs says, "any way of telling which manufacturer supplied our killer?"

"I would have to subject it to rigorous examination - that is, _Abby _would have to subject it to rigorous examination - but from what I've seen in the pictures they're pretty much identical. A lot of what I've seen comes from Toledo."

"Not Ohio, I take it."

"No, boss. Spain." That city has a long held standing as the premier sword manufacturing city, a centuries-old proud and well justified reputation. "I can't say that they come from one manufacturer, but I can find out."

"You do that."

x

Gibbs walks over to Ziva, who'd commenced taking pictures at the first spray of blood. She'd tracked the damage back to the body while ignoring the suggestions of passing motorists. "What have you got?"

"Nineteen offers for rides, two proposals and sixteen pussy calls."

He thinks this one over. "Cat calls?"

Her answer is delayed by a yell from within a Toyota. "No, Gibbs, this time I think _I _am right."

He decides not to pursue it. The woman is a walking inspiration, but he knows her to be as deadly as she is inspiring. Too bad her admirers don't know that.

"What about the body?" A whistle cuts him off and Ziva offers the driver a rude direction, something Gibbs can't quite bring himself to call her on.

"Oh, you mean _her_ body," Ziva clarifies, annoyed. "It looks as though she was stabbed about 35 feet back and then–" Her report is cut by a particularly unimaginative suggestion. Gibbs has had enough.

"Come on."

"Where?"

"The Station." He had planned on making it his first stop of the day, this incident only confirms that the base is the focal point of their investigation.

"Good. At least _there _I shall be free of Neanderthals."

"Nope. They'll just be better dressed."

xxx

Gibbs and David had arrived in his car, McGee had ridden with DiNozzo, allowing thee team to split up later to pursue separate investigative paths. Gibbs' first stop is the Base Commander's office. Commander Harold Letzkie, Executive Officer in charge while his CO is on Leave, receives them in his office under the escort of his Yeoman Samuel Geleta. Letzkie is a tall man in his late forties with receding black hair, his deep blue uniform jacket laden with medal bars and his shoulder epaulets bear the three gold bars of his rank.

"Special Agent Gibbs, Officer David, I've already been informed of the murder of Lieutenant Stratton." Letzkie has worked with these agents before and greets them with a handshake before sitting back down behind his desk. "Thank you for getting here so fast."

"We were already on our way over regarding Captain Morrison."

The Commander looks at him blankly. "Morrison? Why about Morrison?" Isn't their first concern going to be a dead Officer?

The question gives Gibbs pause. "He's dead, Commander." Letzkie's eyes go wide. "He and his wife, in the parking lot of La Chateau Julienne last evening."

Letzkie's expression clearly shows how little he likes getting the news last. He slaps the intercom button. "Geleta - get in here!" It takes less than three seconds for the door to fly open, admitting the startled Yeoman. "Did you know that Captain Morrison is also dead - since last evening?" If anything, Geleta's surprise is considerably less guarded than his superior's.

"No sir!"

"Answers - ten minutes!"

"Yes, Commander!" He salutes and vanishes.

Letzkie takes a moment to compose himself. "Well, this is embarrassing," he admits.

"Yes, sir."

"What happened to them?"

"Short answer; he was shot and she had her throat cut." He's not willing to let any of the details out yet, not even to the man's CO. Even the News services which had been on the scene had received a vastly edited version of the events.

"Two attackers?"

"Too soon to tell definitely."

"Of course."

"Do you know why they were at that Restaurant?" Gibbs does know, he wants to know who else does.

"Yesterday was their 30th Anniversary. Morrison told me last week he had something special planned. He wanted to pull out all the stops, make up for the long hours he had been putting in here."

"I understand that Captain Morrison worked in Research and Development."

"He heads - headed - up a Special Project. Lieutenant Stratton was on his team."

Gibbs isn't surprised. He can even hear the capitals. "What were they working on?"

"I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs, I can't tell you that."

"We have full Security Clearance," Gibbs reminds him.

"I know you do, but that's not the issue. I can't tell you what they were working on because _I_ do not know."

x

Gibbs could ask how the Executive Officer of the base, nominally in command, could not know about something under his direction but does not do so. Letzkie's displeasure is quite evident. "The Pentagon has designated this project as 'Need to Know' and has decided that, as XO, I do not need to know. Fine, I've followed worse orders. They don't mind if I don't like it. I know nothing of it beyond its name; 'Project Dragonfire'."

Both Gibbs and Ziva carefully school their expressions. First 'Dragonclaw', now...

"Does the Captain need to know?" Gibbs wouldn't put it past the Pentagon brass to keep even the Station's commander in the dark if it suited their needs.

"He does and I've just been on the line with him when I found out who had been attacked. Apparently the Pentagon places a great deal of stock in this group. Captain Parker's in Norway and he's getting the next bird back. I expect him within three hours."

"All right. For the moment we'll proceed without the 'need to know' what they were up to. Can you tell me if anyone would want either of them dead?"

"Captain Morrison was an okay guy personality-wise. Lieutenant Stratton could be somewhat stand-offish, but she lived on the base while Morrison and his wife had a home off-base. That makes a lot of difference."

"How so?"

"They're on a strict 'gag' order, can't talk about their project. When you can't discuss what you do with anyone, it pretty much limits conversation. Morrison had a good out, he and his wife have friends and a life outside these gates."

"How many people work with them?"

"There are seven other principle scientists, Doctors and Professors beyond their Naval standings, and a staff of over ninety assistants, not to mention a steady stream of scientists from MIT, NASA, CalTech, NSA, the whole alphabet soup going in and out. No one gets through that door without the highest of Security Clearance _and_ Special Clearance from the Pentagon.

"They're housed in a guarded Bunker in the northern quadrant with their own power, their own computers. They have access to data from scientific facilities all over the world, but their contacts are carefully screened and restricted and their computers have the best firewalls and safety screens money can buy. They're completely independent and isolated."

"Like their own country."

"Own fort is more like it. Bunker 1 is heavily guarded, completely secured. Everybody gets searched, you can't carry a microbe out. The top echelon doesn't even answer to us unless they want to - and they don't. Morrison answers to the Pentagon, the man he reports to is on nickname basis with Bush."

Gibbs doesn't need a map drawn. This level of security is far beyond the usual and will hinder every aspect of the investigation. But what about the job is enough to lead someone to murder? "I'd like to see Lieutenant Stratton's quarters before I interview the rest of the team."

"I can let you in her quarters, no problem, but I doubt I can authorize you to have access to the surviving members of that 'Think Tank'."

"No problem," he tells the Commander, pulling his cell phone from his black jacket pocket. "Our Director knows some phone numbers."

xxx

Ziva uses the key provided by Station Security to unlock the bachelor quarters assigned to Lt. Carla Stratton and allows Gibbs to enter first. This is a Secondary Crime Scene and they enter with guns drawn. The rooms hadn't been screened before or after Stratton's death, they can't presume there are no intruders or dangers. They sweep the rooms rapidly and efficiently. They're alone.

"Looks like a hotel room," Ziva says.

"Normally they start out this way, but don't last."

"This one has."

The main room is a combination living room / bedroom, the double bed directly inward from the door, between two tables, each with a lamp upon it and room for little more. The lamps as well as the overhead light had been controlled from the switch by the door, though they could work independently as well. On the Agents' left is a smaller kitchen and the next is the bathroom with shower. There's nothing more. It does resemble the sterile environment of a hotel room in that first moment when the door is opened, when nothing of the eventual occupant is imprinted anywhere.

The room is immaculate, the bed extending toward them from the far wall made with tight military precision. Gibbs knows that he could toss a coin upon the taut blanket and it would bounce off onto the floor. All the other furnishings are precisely placed. The room looks like it could be photographed for a magazine spread.

The only thing of significance in the room is a closed laptop computer on a table at the right wall. Gibbs notes that it's hooked up to a telephone jack. 'So much for restricted computer access.' Perhaps that rule applies only to Bunker 1.

x

Gibbs had been in many of the bachelor quarters in the various buildings on the tremendous base, none before this had been so bereft of personality. Every place, no matter how brief the occupancy was to be, took on something of the nature of its occupant.

"How long did you say she was here?" Ziva asks.

"Three years."

"Is it possible she just moved into these quarters?"

"Not according to the file. So far as I can see, _that's _the only personal thing here."

At odds with the orderly room is a tall poster in a thin wooden frame set next to the main door, directly in sight of anyone sitting or lying upon the bed. The image is five feet tall and truly striking. It depicts a red haired woman apparently on the top of a frozen mountain, except that her 'attire' consists entirely of a metal demi-bra of what looks like gold coins or golden mail, more likely the latter for all the benefit it would give the woman. It is wholly insufficient for containing her 'assets', while her lower attire would not make a suitable thong, except that it is also composed of the round metallic links. It's apparently no more than draping triangles, front and back, the rear triangle only slightly larger than the uselessly small front one. Ornate decorative shoulder barriers 'protect' maybe a three inch wide range of her shoulders. The only things suitable for the weather are lined boots, though Gibbs cannot see the point of them when the metal 'worn' at breasts and hips must be cold enough on the frigid mountain to freeze her – –.

She stands in a provocative action pose; silver sword raised high over her head while before her lies the headless body of some unknown humanoid creature slowly freezing on the icy ground. Of the head there is no sign.

"Who is it?"

"Someone significant," Ziva quips. That much is obvious from it being apparently the only personal item in the entire room.

"You don't know?" he demands. She's too far away for a 'wake-up call', something she clearly knew before speaking.

"Tim would," she assures him, recalling the secret he had revealed to her alone at the Hotel Maritz during the 'Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention'. She's certain that this information, innocuous as it is, is not breaking her promise.

Gibbs looks about the Spartan room. "Was your apartment ever like this?" Though he had been there before, he wonders if the Mossad Agent, with her years of caution in preventing anyone from knowing enough about her to risk her safety, kept her private life as much of a mystery.

"Not mine. You can tell someone's home."

x

Ziva faces the large, colorful poster, pulls out her cell phone and opens it, takes a picture. Then she hits the conference call and speed dial buttons and Gibbs' phone rings a moment later. A final connection is made and McGee's voice acknowledges.

"McGee," Gibbs says, "there's only one thing of interest here. Who is this?" He signals to Ziva, who transmits the image. They need wait only a moment.

//That's 'Red Sonja'. The painting is by Boris Vallejo.//

Gibbs can see the name 'Boris' written large in the lower right corner. "Tell me about her. Why would she be in Lieutenant Stratton's quarters?"

"Well, she's a fictional warrior from someplace called Hyrkania. She was a contemporary of 'Conan the Barbarian', both characters created by Robert E. Howard. According to the legend, she was the sole survivor of the annihilation of her village, was gang-raped by all of the warriors, in consolation of which she was given extraordinary fighting skills and strength by a goddess. She was so good no one could beat her, and because of her rapes she swore that no man would ever touch her - romantically or carnally - unless he could beat her in a fair swordfight."

"Anyone ever do it?"

"Conan."

"Thanks, McGee." Things are starting to fall into place. The races now make sense. "What've you learned?"

"Ducky's about finished, he and I have secured the body."

"You and DiNozzo get on to Morrison's place when you're done there."

"Right, boss."

xx

While Ziva searches the rooms, opening drawers and cabinets, Gibbs takes in the setting as a whole. "Stratton was a creature of habit," Ziva concludes. "She could be found on that road at a specific time. The Morrisons were on their 30th Wedding Anniversary and apparently it was no secret. Anyone who wanted to kill them had only to wait."

"Who knew they were going to Julienne?" The Station's XO knew only they were going 'out', not where.

"Anyone in the Bunker?" she speculates

That is starting to sound like the most likely place to start - if the Director can get them the access they need quickly enough. He is about to point this out when he sees Ziva freeze and then turn sharply toward the poster. She tugs her phone out and flips it open with a snap, stabs the 'redial' and 'conference' buttons as Gibbs pulls his own phone. A moment later, "Tim, describe that sword to me."

//Blade 33 ½ inches, the guard is a curved silver that comes forward in hornlike projections pressing against her back, while the pommel is semispheroid, the curved portion outward, the inner side straight and – _yes_! _That's_ where I've seen it!// he exclaims triumphantly. //Red Sonja!//

"Well done, you two. McGee, I want DiNozzo to get over to Morrison's now. Look for anything there that will point to Dragonclaw, Legolas' arrows, 'Lord of the Rings', anything. We'll pick you up, we've got Stratton's laptop. I want you to pick it apart."

//Right, boss. But I can tell you something right off about 'Lord of the Rings'. Nikita Morrison's company published the most recent edition.//

xxx

In the cavernous chambers of Union Station a tall man wearing a brown leather jacket approaches a bank of lockers and puts his key into one of them. He withdraws a black plastic bag containing a small cardboard box. Closing the locker, he casually strolls away, in due time reaching the rest room. He has to wait a moment for a stall to become available and then he enters, undoes his belt and lowers his pants, sits down with the package on his lap. He opens the cardboard box, finds in it 250 used, non-sequential $100 bills. This, added to his payment for the first execution, actually a 'two-for', brings his sub-total to $50,000.

The Contract has 7 more to go.

Re-boxing the money, he rebags the box, restores his clothes and exits the stall. He washes his hands and leaves the restroom, the bag dangling from his hand as he walks, unnoticed, toward the exit.


	5. Segue

Chapter Five  
Segue

Dr. Donald Mallard presses the blade into the flesh of his newest subject. The sharp implement cuts deeply and skillfully, severs tissue and muscle from bone and sinew. Setting down the tool, he picks up another silver instrument, inserts it into the flesh thus excised, puts it into his mouth and chews thoughtfully, his attention on the book spread upon the table before him.

"Doctor Mallard?"

He looks up from the pages to find a woman standing beside him, her gold framed glasses catching the lights of the cafeteria. "Ah, good afternoon Mother O'Mallory," he greets her warmly, rises to meet her properly.

He notes that her summer 'uniform' of black skirt and light blue 'back button' blouse have been enhanced by the addition of a gold shield affixed to the left side of her skirt. The inch high band of white that encircles her throat completes, with her long fire-red hair, the framing of her face. "And please, call me 'Ducky'," he reminds her.

"If you'll call me Siobhan," she offers, her Gaelic brogue flavoring the name to 'Sha-vawn'.

"I shall be most happy to. Won't you have a seat? May I get you something? As memory serves, I owe you a meal."

"No, thank you, Ducky. I have an appointment with Director Shepherd in about twenty minutes, she wants to go over someof my duties and her expectations, and I usually find it better to approach such 'conferences' on an empty stomach."

"I quite understand."

"Perhaps another time?"

"Of course. So," he says when they're seated, "what may I do for you?"

"Well," she begins self-consciously, "I'm not entirely sure how to put this. Primarily I'm here to offer Last Rites to the person found last evening." She touches the small square mahogany box she has put on the table beside her.

"They are Jewish," he informs her, dubious their desire for the final Sacrament of the Church.

"Oh." She is not entirely put out. She knows this is something she should have checked by phone before coming, and would have had her attention been on her duties rather than her uncertainties. This strange life is still too vague for her to properly grasp, and her place in it far more uncertain.

"But as this would be a 'normal' if unpleasant part of your duty, to what are you 'not entirely sure'?"

There, the man has hit upon the very crux of her dilemma. "Well, I'm also here _looking _for someone. Timmy is very busy, but he tells me occasionally that if I have questions, really important ones, I should seek you out."

"Well, that's very flattering," he tells her. "I shall certainly strive to be all the help I can. Just whom are you looking for?"

She hesitates, knowing how it will come out. "Myself, actually," she admits uncomfortably.

x

"Ah, I understand. It must be quite a change for you, attempting to integrate your regular duties into a position that has effectively been vacant for a considerable period."

"How many Chaplains have there been here?"

"Very few; and none in a very long time. Unlike the Uniformed disciplines, there is just very little organized call for such positions of service. Generally those who feel the need make use of their own or those uniformed Clergy."

"That's what I figured." She wonders again if Timmy has done her a service or not.

"All of which works to your advantage."

"How so?" She's surprised by this conclusion.

"Well, if you are not following anyone else's structure, you are pretty much free to make of the job what you wish; provided of course it meets with the Director's approval, of course."

"She seems a pretty easy person to deal with," Siobhan allows, feeling considerably less lost. 'Timmy's right,' she thinks, 'it's a good idea to listen to this man.' "I was brought into - asked to take - oh, this just isn't...."

"Why not just tell me what's on your mind?"

"I'm rather lost, and a bit overwhelmed. I'm a parish church Curate. I needed permission from Bishop Matthews just to consider this job, and I'm here on a trial basis. My Bishop and your Director will decide if I'm here for more than a few weeks. Meantime, I'm feeling my way through - and feeling pretty lost."

He can empathize with this, recalling his first days in NIS. It hadn't been what NCIS is now and both agencies are worlds away from what he'd been prepared for or what he'd expected.

"Every new experience brings its uncertainties. I have the utmost confidence, however, that you shall not find your place here."

"I – _huh_?"

"I believe you shall _make _it."

x

"Thank you, Ducky. Your faith makes me feel a lot better. I really wasn't sure of myself nor my place in 'En-kiss'."

He recalls having had heard the appellation last evening from her at La Chateau Julienne. She'd explained it sounds more personal than NCIS, a point he tends to agree with.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like something?" he asks, indicating his mostly full plate and glancing at the serving area behind her.

"No, thank you, but please - don't let me hold you."

"Most kind, my dear." He resumes his attack upon the steak. "You know, this reminds me of an occasion in Aberdeen when–"

x

"Ducky, I _really _hate to interrupt," she tells him, vastly uncomfortable, "but may I be completely honest with you?"

"Of _course_," he assures her, hating to think she'd be anything less.

She's even more uncomfortable in having to admit that "Timmy made me promise him something, something I'm embarrassed to admit. I don't want to make you angry, not with him and especially not with me."

"My dear lady, I assure you that you have nothing to fear from me."

She decides to just bite the bullet and say it. "He made me promise that I would interrupt you any time you used the phrase 'this reminds me'. I'm _very _sorry."

But far from the reaction she had feared, he chuckles. "A most formidable gentleman, our Mr. McGee. But then, I have found you to be an equally formidable woman."

She looks down with a surprised smile, hardly knowing how to respond to this unexpected compliment. "I'm hardly that."

"Oh, I beg to differ, Madam. I never did get the opportunity before now to compliment you properly upon your capture of Charles Morley."

"I didn't capture him, Agent Gibbs did that. I just ..." she can't continue, eyes locking to the tabletop, face blushing brightly at the memory. "I was angry at him for what he did to Tina and Chrissie and to who knows how many more? It didn't help that he was trying to wrench my arm out of its soc–" She looks up and is instantly silenced by the look in his eyes, as well as the pain and embarrassment of the memory.

"Do no belittle your own efforts, surprising as they were. The incident could have ended tragically indeed if you had not acted." That she can't deny; he'd have made broken her neck. "I dare say you did not learn such a technique in the Seminary."

She grins ruefully. "First month after I began Cheerleading in High School. One of my friends, a half-back football player, gave me very good advice: 'If you're going to kick, kick for a field goal.'

"And people claim one never learns anything useful in Secondary School," he quips.

"Only the _really_ usefulstuff."

She sits back with a sigh and looks at the clock on the wall. "Well, time to go upstairs and learn my fate."

"Considering the high-power backing you bring with you to this meeting, I shall pray for our Director."

xxx

Tim McGee enters Abby's lab, finding her alone except for her ever-present music. Given the choice, he prefers her friend Dawn's Classical tastes, but knows better than to point this out.

"What can I do for you, McGee?" she asks flatly. This time there's no teasing in her tone. She sees he's particularly uncomfortable and hopes it's no longer about her.

"I'd like you to look into this." He holds a silver laptop computer out to her. "We got it from Lt. Stratton's quarters. It was practically the only thing there."

"What's the matter, McGee, can't get in?" she asks playfully, coming back to life, unable to hold to her determination not to tease, him. If there is one area they are almost perfectly matched, it is in computer skills.

"I got in; most of her stuff is password protected, but she uses only one password: 'Sonja'. I didn't even need a decode algorithm, I guessed it on the fourth try."

"Took you that long? I'd have gotten it in one." Gibbs had told her about the poster and its connection to the sword she's presently studying. "You're a dangerous man, McGee; Gibbs should be glad you're on our side."

The compliment, coming from someone as skilled as he, is appreciated, though it would be more meaningful if the task had actually been difficult. This was like Gibbs' using the password 'alimony'."

"The point is what's on the computer is ... is ..."

"Come on, Tim; is what?" she urges, not understanding his hesitancy.

"Well, there's a bit of business stuff, financial documents, but the vast majority of it is – well, it's – personal. I feel uncomfortable reading it."

"Are you saying, McGee, that because I'm a woman I do better with the personal stuff?"

"Well, I mean ... yeah. That's exactly what I mean."

She takes the computer. "Thanks for the vote of confidence - I think. I'll let you know what I find."

"Do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Don't."

"Don't what?" Now she's really confused.

"Don't let me know. I _already _know. That's why I stopped." He turns and starts out, but gets only as far as the door before turning back. "Abby?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks. I owe you a big one."

It's so hard not to respond to that one! "For what?"

"You'll understand."

x

When he's gone, she puts the machine down and returns to her work. If he's broken the code, seen the contents and not reported immediately to Gibbs, it cannot be Earth-shattering, at least not enough to make her drop her work.

But the longer it sits on her table as she works, the more it impinges on her mind. McGee is neither weak nor churlish, he is a competent Agent well trained to put aside his feelings in pursuit of an Investigation. If he's come across something he cannot handle, something he feels he needs her help on, what could it possibly be?

Turning to the machine, she plugs it in, lifts the top, the system restoring automatically from a 'hibernating' state. Shortly a directory he'd left active comes up, filled with four columns of file names. She double-clicks the first one and the MS Word file opens.

She reads only half a page, but it's enough. "Whoa!" She breathes and after another three paragraphs she has to sit down. She reads the next two pages in mounting disbelief before closing the file and opening the next.

She sits silently in rapt attention, not hearing her music or anything else, totally absorbed. By the time she opens the third file, she's utterly stunned.

xxx

Gibbs, on his way down to Abby's lab, waits at the elevator and as the doors open he's surprised by the person he finds aboard it. Reverend Siobhan O'Mallory is alone, in her 'uniform' looking no different than in the first days of their 'acquaintance'. Neither remembers it as a particularly pleasant period. She steps back, allowing him space to enter. "Special Agent Gibbs," she greets him neutrally, trying to push back the initial response the sight of him had evoked.

"Mother O'Mallory." He gets on, pushing the button for the Forensics Lab below the lighted Main Floor button. "Here to see the Director?" It's not too long a guess.

"Yes. She's told me about some of my duties here." Her voice, despite the lilting brogue, is polite but impersonal. The doors close, sealing them in.

As the car begins to descend they don't look at each another, the silent tension strong between them. As the car is about to reach the main level he reaches out, flips down the silver 'Emergency Stop' switch and the car stops abruptly. The lights dimming and the supplementary lights under the handrails come on.

Siobhan, surprised, takes a distrustful step back. "What are you doing?"

"My conference room," he explains.

She grows far less trusting. "The conference room is on five."

He belatedly realizes she knows nothing of his practice and grants that, to her, it must appear rather sinister. "I wanted to clear the air between us."

She allows herself to _look_ a little more relaxed - but only a little and by no means more than an appearance. She doesn't trust him, and wonders if this steel chamber will muffle a good, full-bodied shriek.

Then she remembers he already knows she can and will defend herself - and not at all in ways one might call 'ladylike'. She wonders which of them can attain a higher pitch.

If he even _looks_ like he will move an inch closer to her, they will find out.

x

"I wanted to apologize for that incident in the Interrogation Room. I'm sorry."

She considers carefully. He _has _apologized, and she can't dismiss or reject that, certainly not out of hand. But despite knowing _why_ he had done what he had, she has a very hard time letting go of something. "I was angry with you; for a long time. I forgave you - did Timmy tell you?"

"He did."

"But I am still …. I don't _like_ what you did. It was brutal."

"Yes, it was; brutal and unfair. I tried to badger you and force you to break your vows in the interest of getting the name of the one killing your friends. I almost forced you to face a Tribunal which would have defrocked you and ruined your future."

She's silent, not knowing how to answer this 'apology'.

"Since your appointment I've avoided you. I was uncomfortable with the position it gives you in NCIS, a different one from any Agent. I still haven't adjusted to your position either as a Chaplain _or_ a Priest. I'm not sure how to deal with you."

"Well ... if it's any help, I don't know how I fit in here either."

"Then until we both sort things out," he extends his hand, "truce?"

She clasps his. "Truce."

x

"Now, would you do me one _real _favor?" she asks.

"Certainly."

She knows this isn't the first time he's used this 'conference room' but "Would you never turn this elevator off again - while I'm in it at least?"

He reaches over, flips the switch up. The lights resume their former intensity and the car continues its descent. "I promise."

xxx

"Hi!" A familiar voice over Abby's shoulder makes her jump back from that pleasant place where the contents of the pages displayed upon the monitor screen had taken her.

"Dawn!" she exclaims, turning around. "You're _back_!" She'd actually forgotten she'd expected her young friend.

"Sure." The blonde woman replies, wondering why she's so surprised, sorry to have startled her so thoroughly. Abby had virtually leapt off the stool.

"How was the tour?"

"It was fine," she looks past Abby at the screen. "What are you reading?" She reads a few lines. "Oh _wow_!"

"Unbelievable, isn't it?" Abby asks with a wry smile, not happy about having been caught but trying to make it all seem in order.

"I don't believe _you_. Where did you get this?"

"The laptop belongs to the stabbing victim from this morning."

She reads a few more paragraphs in mounting disbelief. "Oh my virgin eyes!"

Abby chuckles, "There's nothing _virginal _about _you_."

Dawn turns to her, deeply stricken, her eyes reflecting painful betrayal.

"Oh Dawnie, I forgot! I didn't mean it that way!"

x

At the beginning of the Summer Dawn had been raped, Abby finding her in a hospital Emergency Room. The blonde beauty is still a long way from recovering from that ordeal and the trauma that followed.

"I'm _sorry_!"

"I understand," Dawn tells her flatly.

"Sunshine -."

The blonde girl holds her hands up, stopping her sharply. "Look, it happened! I don't want to _dwell_ on it. Just forget it. I know what you meant." She wants to push the memories, the feelings, away, to concentrate upon something else, _anything _else.

She points at the screen. "There was certainly nothing virginal about _her_."

"No way. But enough's enough." She gets off the stool. "I've got to get to work. If Gibbs comes in here and catches me reading _porn_, he'll be madder than the time he came in and caught McGee and I –." She stops abruptly. "Come to think of it, maybe you _are _too virginal to hear what happened."

"No, tell me," Dawn urges with a grin, her discomfort 'forgotten' in the light of a potentially far more distracting segue.

"No way," Abby denies in mock seriousness, determined to torment her friend.

"_Tell _me!" she cajoles in mounting anticipation. Knowing her friend as she does, this sounds particularly _juicy_.

"And corrupt the morals of a minor? No way."

"What do you mean 'minor'?" the twenty two year old demands.

Abby makes a show of thinking it over. "No." She steps away, trying to hide a grin. She'll tell her – but much later after a long period of torture.

"'All right, but you realize you're stunting my emotional growth'," she quotes, finding the plea as ineffective as it originally was when Wesley Crusher had tried it. She looks at the computer screen displaying its prose so invitingly. "Well, if I can't live vicariously through my friend, can I at least _read _about it?"

"Sure. Knock yourself out."

She sits on the stool, settling herself and adjusting her miniskirt. "I have a feeling I _will_."

x

After a long period of silence between them, Abby can no longer stand the pain of her conscience. She'd invited the woman up for a fun weekend and all Dawn had to show for it was a beauty parlor visit, a rental bill for a gown, an aborted dinner and a morning in a lab interspersed with a dry as dust tour through the 'public' areas of the secure facility.

"I'm really so sorry, Sunshine," Abby apologizes again as she works upon placing samples into her Mass Spectrometer. "I didn't expect when I got in today that we were going to have another body to investigate." She had hoped she could clear up most of the Forensics work on the Morrisons in time to at least have the afternoon with her friend, but that hope had been dashed as soon as she'd reported in. It's beginning to look like the chances of getting out before evening are slim.

"Oh, don't be silly, I understand." Dawn, still seated on the stool at her workstation, admonishes her. "And I had a grand time on that tour this morning, it really opened my eyes to a lot of the things you do around here. I was thinking that after lunch I'd go see some of the Washington sights, then meet you back at your place for dinner - then we'll go out."

"Count on it. Just don't forget to return that pass to Security on your way out."

Dawn looks down at the plastic coated 'NCIS Visitor' pass attached to her blouse's pocket. "I won't forget."

x

Finishing up, Abby sets the Mass Spectrometer, turns around and almost jumps out of her skin as she nearly collides with Jimmy Palmer. "_Jimmy_ - I _told_ you not to do that!" she exclaims, slapping his arm.

"I'm sorry, I–" but she's already turned her attention to Dawn.

"And you were a big help!"

"Sorry," she replies with a grin, her hands clutched quite high on her lap, "I was so taken by this vision of manly pulchritude I lost my voice." She grins further as Jimmy looks about, seeking the source of the girl's muteness. Abby can't help but share in the mirth. Jimmy's modest enough not to know his own self-worth, and Dawn's been affected by her reading of Carla Stratton's deepest thoughts.

"What've you got, Jimmy?"

"I'll bet _I_ know what he's got!" Dawn chimes in, leaning forward. Abby notices that the second of her friend's four buttons has 'accidentally' fallen open. It disconcerts Jimmy further.

"Er - I - that is I–" He can't force himself to turn back to Abby, but holds up a sample packet helplessly. She snatches it out of his hand.

"Thanks," she says with a sly grin. "If I need _anything_, I'll _call _you," she promises, putting an extra warm depth into the offer.

"And if _she_ doesn't, _I_ will!" Dawn promises even more broadly. When Jimmy can finally drag his eyes up to meet hers, the look she gives him makes him start to perspire.

"Well yes, tha - that is I – Dotor - Doctor Mallard is - I really have to–"

Dawn hops down off the stool, the hop quite unnecessary except that it makes her body move in a most distracting manner, the effectiveness of which is easy to confirm by his eyes again locked upon her chest. She still apparently hasn't 'noticed' the gap in her blouse.

"I'm hungry," she says, stepping up to Jimmy and putting both her arms about his right one, hugging his arm to her side and just happening to accidentally force her blouse to gape, this time allowing an excellent downward view. The look in Jimmy's eyes shows his increasing hunger as well. "Would you take me out for a hamburger?"

He manages to meet her blue eyes, falling into their appealing depth. "Well, I - I mean Doctor Mal–" he can't keep his eyes out of her gaping blouse, 'knowing' she's unaware of the display she's giving him. He doesn't warn her, hoping she won't notice. "I really should be getting–"

"Pleeeease?" she appeals, turning directly toward him and hugging his arm tighter, making him very aware of it now between her warm breasts.

"Wal - well, I - I mean _sure_, I - I mean it is time for lush - for _lunch_, ins't - isn't it?"

"And I'll bet you know all the _breast_ places," she breathes, letting the faux pas intentionally slip past. Her eyes stroke him.

"Well, year - yar - yeah." Dawn's smile is for both of them, though communicating far different messages. "I could - we could - go up to the cafeteria fo - for some humbarg - hamburger."

"Forget the hamburger," she coos hotly as they walk toward the door, both her arms still wrapped warmly about his right one, "I'll bet you could give me a fantastic _sausage_!"

x

Well it is for Abby that the lab doors slide closed at that moment, because she doesn't think she can contain herself much longer. Ever since the incident in Clarkston Lakes, the one thing Abby had insisted of her friend was 'if you feel something, _feel_ it. Every time you change your manner, change your life, change who you are, that bastard wins and you're raped again.'

She is pleased to see her words have been taken to heart - at least she _thinks _she is. This time she will have to reserve judgment until she hears the result.

Pleasant as it had been to spend the morning with her oldest friend, when she's so busy she can't leave the lab she knows that in time, no matter how interesting the setting, Dawn would begin to grow bored. And she also knew that, when bored, her rather devious sense of humor was bound to kick in. And certainly her reading material had a major influence upon her.

Not that Dawn would do anything _wrong_. She'd give Jimmy a half hour of pleasant conversation and shameless teasing flirtation, but she'd never cross the line. Abby knows the young man in turn is a safe companion, or she would have said something long before the ploy had developed. But nothing should go wrong. They'll go to the cafeteria, have a meal Jimmy will never forget, flavored with some safe sexual chatter and then Dawn will return; no promises made so none broken.

And if Jimmy then feels compelled by Dawn's teasing to seek out Michelle Lee - well, everyone will benefit from this luncheon.

x

Abby is the only one who knows Michelle's secret, something the Agent had been compelled to reveal in asking for her help in covering up for Jimmy Palmer. It's a secret she doesn't mind keeping. There had been no point in trying to keep the information from Gibbs, he'd figured it out long ago, but she'd been discrete with the others. As tumultuous as Abby's relationship with the Asian woman had initially been, her revelation and appeal for help and discretion had led to a closer tie between them.

Then again, Abby reflects, there is one possible drawback to Dawn's 'relief of boredom'. If the Agent were to catch them together in the cafeteria while Dawn was applying her considerable charms, the witch would do something literally unimaginable to his sausage.

x

Turning to her microscope, she peers into it at the small trace of 'foreign' substance found on the shirt of Carla Stratton when she hears the door to the lab slide open. "That was _quick_," she says, not looking back, wondering what had made her return so soon. "You know, you've got a pretty warped sense of humor. Most times you're good, but occasionally you can be a flaming _slut_!"

"People _usually_ call me a 'bastard'," an unexpected voice replies, making her turn quickly, surprised and embarrassed.

"Gibbs! I'm sorry, I wasn't talking to you."

"Pity; 'slut' would make a nice change."

"I'll remember that," she promises, grateful for the ammunition.

x

"Where's your friend?" he inquires, glancing about. He'd signed the Clearance Request for her when he'd reached his desk this morning, just before getting the call about Stratton.

"She's gone to lunch with Jimmy. She's taken him out on a T.D."

"T.D.?"

"Tease date. She'll let him have some P&H - that's 'peeks and hints' - and then come back."

"I'd hate to think you - or she - indulge in such things."

"Aw, come on, Gibbs, its _fun_. Don't tell me you've never teased a woman."

"Been married four times. My teasing days are over."

"Awww, that's sad."

"Except with you."

"Awww." Now it is at least more hopeful.

"But should she be behaving like that after…"

"Come on, Gibbs, this is _Jimmy_ we're talking about. The man is as safe as a church and he's old enough to handle it." 'And even if he isn't, there's always a closet near Legal', she concludes privately.

"Okay," he agrees, setting the issue aside. "So, what have you got for me?" Before she can answer: "And _without_ the T.D.!"

"Darn, Gibbs, you're no _fun_!"

"That's what wives 2 and 4 said." He pauses. "Come to think of it, so did 3."

x

"Well, let's see if this rocks your boat."

"Oars in the water, I'm all yours."

"Oh, be still my heart!" she exclaims, pressing her hands to her chest. But the look he gives her isn't as playful. "Okay, I found some traces of leather on the back and left side of Stratton's halter shirt and a different kind of leather from her left side. I figure he was going so fast he had to have struck her with his arm while he was ramming that sword into her. I also got traces of leather off the gripe of the sword, but different than on the back of her shirt, though it matched that on her side."

"Leather jacket, leather gloves."

"Give the man a cheroot."

"Can you trace them?"

"Working on it now. We're talking microscopic here. The jacket - there was more to test - is cow, North American. I'm narrowing down sources even as we speak. I'll have an answer for you shortly. There was a single print on the sword, I'm running it now - I'll let you know. But on the arrow and that hinky 'Dragonclaw' Jimmy told me about I got bupkis. Both've been polished to within an inch of their lives. I'm betting they're looking so new because they _are_ new."

"Recent purchases, left at the scene to taunt us."

"Looks that way."

"There are a lot of 'Re-creation' companies. McGee's running a search for anyone who ordered all three items in the last year, but my gut tells me that'll be a red herring. He bought a weapon last evening, pretending to be me."

"Really?" She is impressed. "What kind?"

"An assassin's weapon, so I'm told. Handle wraps about the wrist, a flame shaped and colored blade about 8 inches long hides against the palm."

"A 'flamebird', huh? _Cool_."

That she can identify it from this description makes him uncomfortable. "I'll make you a present of it when it comes in."

"Thank you, Gibbs! You always seem to know just what to get me."

"I didn't really believe it would come in."

"Oh, the 'Fantasy Weapons' market is a big thing: BudK, Gallery, Royal Vault, all sorts of places."

"Maybe I should have come to you."

"Always telling you."

If anything, the undercurrent of her answer reminds him why sometimes he does not come to her. "I told you, 'no T.D.'"

"That's not T.D., that's T.I."

"T.I.?"

"Tease innuendo."

He just shakes his head as he walks away.

xxx

Tim and Ziva have left the bullpen for a break. Staring at computer screens can only accomplish so much, no matter how skilled the searchers. But rather than going to the cafeteria level Tim surprises the woman by pressing the elevator button for the top floor. As they're in the car alone, she anticipates at any moment he'll throw the switch to halt the car's ascent. He doesn't, but allows it to rise to its destination. Getting off without a word, he surprises her once again by leaving her behind as he turns left and starts down the corridor. "Tim," she calls softly as the car doors close behind her, but he does not slow down, "where are you going?"

"Someplace special - follow if you _dare_."

There can, of course, be only one answer to this cryptic challenge.

x

She follows him down a long corridor to the Emergency door. This door, mounted with a red and silver press-bar, is only to be used for evacuations. Pressing the bar will set off not only the alarms in this building but others in strategic areas of the base. He reaches for the door and Ziva grabs his wrist. "Hey, you want to–"

Before she can prevent him, he's pushed the door, which swings inward a few inches, enough for him to peek to the right. He swings the door open and leads her through into the dim staircase, easing the door shut behind them.

"Only a very few people know that latch's broken," he tells her quietly, "no alarm." He presses her back into the corner he'd inspected. The staircase is dimly lit, glow-pups providing the only light until they would come on full strength in an emergency. These stairs lead down to the back of the building. In the space next to where he's pushed her is an 'accordion-folded' fire hose and pipes run along the ceiling to various openings high above. "I found out about this from Pinchus, some people use it for privacy." He takes her in his arms; she molds her body to his as they kiss.

"So - ah!" His lips find her throat as she tries to keep quiet in the dim hideaway even as bolts of electric sensation shoot through her body, "you brought me here so you - oh! - could have your - ah! - _way_ with me!"

He tugs her shirt out of the waistband of her pants, makes her raise her arms as he pulls the material free. Rather than letting it fall, she uses it to trap her wrists as she holds her hands high. She's 'bound' as he 'attacks' her bare breasts with hands and lips, her breath quickening.

"If I'm to be - _oh_! - your helpless _victim_, please don't hurt me, sir."

He grins, knowing there is nothing helpless about her, but if that's the game she would play….

He undoes her pants, pulls down the zipper, slips into character even as he tugs her pants over her hips and down her thighs. His hand slips into the gap thus made, pushes the pants down her legs, his other hand tugging her closer. He licks and gently sucks her firming nipple, his hand comes up between her legs and makes a discovery.

"The - _oh God_! - crotchless panties you - _ah_! - gave me." She lets the pants fall to the floor, stepping out of them and takes a step aside, admitting him, his touch making her cry out. "The _blue_ ones. Ohhh!" His fingers find the gap in the sheer material. "Oh, sir, _oh_ please - have _mercy_!"

He eases his attack on her firm nipple, comes up to kiss her again; her arms are still held high and bound by her shirt. "My 'victim' does tend to _scream_."

"It's all right!" she gasps past his lips, moaning as his finger pets her most sensitive spot. "You always have something _big_ to gag me with…."

xxx

Professor Joseph Parseur has been trying to sleep all afternoon. Between the television blaring in the apartment over his head and the teething baby screaming her lungs out below his bedroom, he wishes he had simply curled up in a Navy cot next to his desk back at Bunker 1. The more he tries to ignore the cacophony of noise beating his ears and mind to a whimpering pulp, the hotter his frustration and anger grow. When a particularly strident screech from the baby no one has attempted to quiet in an hour brings him bolt upright upon his bed, he is ready to–

A heavy knock nearly splinters his door and Parseur cannot believe it. This is the final straw. 'Who the _hell_ is pounding on my door?' he thinks, anger broiling. '_I'm_ the only one in the damn building who's _not_ making noise!'

When it sounds again, even more insistently than a moment before, he drags himself off the bed. Exhaustion makes him stagger out of the bedroom, down the hall and to the rude visitor who pounds upon his door as if uncertain he can be heard over the blaring television or shrieking baby.

Parseur unlocks the door, determined to relieve his growing anger and frustration upon this intruder. He yanks the door open sharply. "_What_?"

The long wide blades cut deep through the hollow of his throat, thrust with such force they penetrate through the back of his neck. The two longer side blades slice either side of his spine to emerge in two bloody spikes, the shorter middle blade just reaching that strong obstruction.

His murderer, a tall man in a brown leather jacket, shoves Parseur off his feet and he lands hard on his back in the hall, the blades still buried through his neck. Parseur, in his final moment, tries to breathe through the blades that have penetrated trachea and esophagus, chokes as he draws a wash of blood into his lungs. He never has time to realize that he'll never again have to worry about getting enough sleep.


	6. Enlightenment

Chapter Six  
Enlightenment

"Director in?" Gibbs asks as he strides past Cynthia's desk, heading for the inner door. The young woman is out from behind her desk, crosses the office and interposes herself between him and the door. "Not bad."

"You're a great help to my reflexes and no; she's not taking visitors."

"I hope you're up to speed in real emergencies," he tells her, withdrawing and turning away.

"Count on it," she assures him, following him away from the door.

He completes the turn, ducks under her guard, rounds past her and opens the door, "because you stink at basketball," he tells her with a triumphant smile.

"Come in, Agent Gibbs." Jennifer Shepherd directs, acceding to the inevitable.

x

"Some day you and Cynthia are just going to go at it, and I'm going to let her." Jenny tells him as he sits down in the chair. She'd caught the glare her secretary had given him as she'd closed the door.

"I'm just working on her reflexes," he assures her.

"Her reflexes are fine, thank you very much. She completed her Level Five unarmed combat training last week."

"Thanks for the 'warning'," he tells her dryly. He respects the woman, but her position is primarily that of a Receptionist, not someone likely to be proficient in combat.

"She mopped the floor with Jurginson."

"Thanks for the warning." This time he actually means it. Acton Jurginson may not be in the same league with Gibbs who'd maintained his Marine fighting skills, but he is no one's 'mop head'. "She and I must spar sometime." He'll see just how much the woman does know.

"I wouldn't want to lose you."

"That sounds like you're working up to a bet," he tells her with a growing smile.

"Twenty bucks."

"You're on." He's intrigued by her confidence. He'll find out if it's properly placed.

"Now that we've got that out of the way...."

"The 'think tank'."

"The 'think tank'," she shakes her head, trying not to sigh. "I'll tell you, Jethro, this is a tough nut. I've called in favors like you wouldn't believe, but no takers. I can't get you in."

"Can't?" He doesn't believe in the word, especially not from her.

"Can't. I've called the Pentagon, the State Department, the SecNav; hell, I've considered Interpol. I can't get an answer."

"Whatever they're doing there must really be impressive."

"I wouldn't know."

"What answer are you getting?"

"I'm not even getting a run-around, not even the old soft shoe. Officially that 'project' you told me about does not exist."

"And unofficially?"

"Now that's the strange thing," she tells him, leaning forward to emphasize her point, "there is no 'unofficial'."

"There's _always _an unofficial."

"Not this time. It's a blank cipher. There's _nothing_. The Party Line is there is no 'Project Dragonfire', there's nothing special about Captain Morrison or Lieutenant Stratton, there's nothing going on in Bunker 1, but you're not allowed to go to look."

"The hell I'm not; the Director of the project and his wife are in drawers in Autopsy and one of the other eight senior scientists is on his table with 'Red Sonja's' sword sticking out of her chest. I should think they would be very interested."

"They're interested, all right; they're just not talking about it. Those very few who don't hit me with a blank look when I mention Project Dragonfire throw the phrases 'National Security' and 'Need to Know' at me so much that I'm ready to slap somebody."

"Maybe I should have followed Cynthia's advice."

"We both know you better. The point is I'm not getting anywhere. The stone wall I'm butting my head against makes the Great Wall of China seem like–"

"Director Shepherd?" Cynthia's voice emerges from the intercom.

She reaches for the device, regretting the woman's 'timing' when she sees the smile on Gibbs' face. "Yes, Cynthia?"

"I have the Secretary of State on the line."

Shepherd picks up the phone. "Yes, Condi," she greets the Secretary with the informality of long acquaintance, raising her crossed fingers. There is a brief but intense pause. "I understand. Thank you." She puts the phone down. "We have clearance to interview the senior surviving scientist, a Dr. Marc Shaw–" Gibbs is halfway out of his chair "in MTAC."

Gibbs halts three-quarters up, favoring her with a sour look before he completes the motion. "MTAC."

"Yes."

"MTAC is for long range conferences," he tells her what she knows so well. "I can't conduct an investigation by camera phone."

"Did it sound like a suggestion? No personal contact, MTAC or nothing."

He makes a show of thinking it over. "MTAC."

"I knew you'd see it her way."

"Never happen."

"I knew that too."

xxx

MTAC, the Military Threat Assessment Center is, on first glance, not impressive. But this is a case of image being far less than substance. A visitor, should it be possible to gain admittance through verification of ID via a retinal scan, would descend a carpeted ramp along one side of a room. That room is reminiscent of a studio's 'Dailies' room, complete with three rows of four cushioned chairs on a three tiered set of platforms. There are numerous support and analysis facilities spread throughout the Headquarters building, all of which center in this room. The focus of this vast collection of data is a tremendous video screen ten feet high and twelve wide, together with three smaller screens stacked one above the other to the screen's left. Two Operators at the left wall control the room's feed from any number of sources.

MTAC's purpose is Communication. On the huge screen and three smaller ones can be displayed absolutely any image obtained from anywhere in the world: on the surface, under the sea or out in space. An office, a ship at sea, a lonely road in the desert half a world away - if a camera can see it by ground, sea, air or from orbit, MTAC can display it. The main screen can produce a single image to dominate the room or divide into as many smaller ones as needed to support any size conference.

Into this complex nerve center of NCIS and down the ramp stride Director Shepherd and Supervisory Special Agent Gibbs, followed by Senior Field Agent DiNozzo, Special Agent McGee and Mossad Officer David.

The later three have been carefully briefed on the official image they are to project. It's hard to awe or intimidate a witness secured in a concrete bunker miles away at Naval Station Norfolk, but they are to try.

Shepherd and Gibbs assume prominent positions front and center, the others arranged in the rear and to their left. All five put on combined earphone microphones handed them by one of the technicians, which link them to one another. Though the fidelity of transmission is excellent, they want no nuance of the conversation to be lost. On the top screen of the three auxiliaries the Agents see they are visible in the 'feed' but in no sense distracting attention from the principles.

Since Shepherd makes no move to avail herself of the dozen seats behind her, no one gives them a glance. This is not a moment for comfort but for confrontation.

x

"All tapes off," Shepherd commands. Though the operators do not hesitate to follow her order, the look Gibbs gives her telegraphs his thoughts quite well. "Orders," she says curtly. Her tone make it clear he will be well advised not to question her. She knows he'll only file the protest away for a more opportune moment.

"Open Channel D."

The screen displays a middle-aged black man dressed in white shirt and dark tie under a white lab coat. The coat blends well with the whitewashed wall behind him.

Normally on this tremendous screen there is plenty of background to be seen, be it office or exterior setting. The fact the man can best be distinguished as a face and long tie standing in a blizzard is also telling, and none of the Agents like what it says.

"Doctor Shaw?" Shepherd inquires politely. If this man is not Shaw, she's going to be very annoyed. Reconsidering, she decides she will save time and be annoyed now.

"Director Shepherd," the man greets her cordially, though she notes he has not actually acknowledged her 'question'.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. As you know, the matter is quite serious."

"You have a gift for understatement, Madam. The 'matter' is extremely serious."

"We need to come out there to investigate the circumstances behind the deaths of two of your colleagues."

"I do understand, believe me, and I would like nothing better than to help catch Al and Carla's murderer. But I am sure you've been told about the sensitive nature of our research. Getting Clearance to enter is exceedingly difficult."

"We're not after detailed secrets, except for how they may relate to three murders."

"I'm sure you understand that when the Government throws a blanket of secrecy over something, they rarely make exceptions."

Jenny grow tired of the verbal fencing. Shortly she'll turn things over to the Chief Investigator and Shaw will come to wish he'd been cooperative. "Just what is your project, Doctor."

"It's called 'Dragonfire'."

"We know that and it is singularly uninformative; except where Nikita Morrison was killed by something called 'Dragonclaw' - so you can see why we are suspicious." She has played the volley broadly and scores a direct hit.

"Yes, I can see where that might lead you to questions," he admits, his calm veneer shaken. "But there really is no relation."

"To _what_, Doctor? Let's stop dancing."

"Very well. I've been ordered by the Secretary of State to brief you on the project."

x

The long silence strains her last nerve. "You may begin, Doctor."

"Our research has advanced to the stage where we have developed a working prototype of the PDC Mark 9."

"_Doc_-tor."

"Sorry," he apologizes with what seems to be sincerity; Shepherd will decide later, "I'm not used to discussing the project with people who aren't already fully informed of the science involved. How are you on Advanced Physics?"

"All NCIS Candidates must be College graduates," Jenny tells him with exhausted patience. She remembers why she'd come out of the Field and empathizes with Gibbs in his frustrations. Unfortunately, she can rarely make use of many of his solutions.

"I'm sorry. Perhaps it is better to ask 'what do you know about photons?'"

"Not a lot," Gibbs admits, attempting to draw out more information.

McGee speaks first, apparently having decided to play the science card. "They're the components of light, with almost immeasurable mass, traveling at, well, the speed of light. You can't actually analyze _one_, though you may analyze the effects of ensembles of photons collectively. In the early days of 'Classical Science' their natures had given off contradictory readings, that of physical particles and waves of energy. They displayed the characteristics of both."

"Essentially correct," Shaw says, apparently gratified to find someone he can talk to, "it's only under the Quantum theories, which demonstrated the 'wave-particle duality', that–"

"Does any of your crew speak English?" Gibbs demands. "If so, trot them out."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Shaw tries to continue the tale, ignoring the barb, "we can make light to order, but that which we currently know about it is not useful in the current emergency–"

"Excuse me, Doctor," Director Shepherd breaks in; her patience, like Gibbs', nearing exhaustion, "_what_ emergency?"

"Er, perhaps I should start at the beginning."

"That sounds like a _very_ good idea, Doctor."

x

"Five years ago we were charged with formulating a defense against such threats as 1950 DA;" he continues without a break. Gibbs and Shepherd exchange uninformed glances, "we determined that the technology that was available to us, i.e. rockets, bombs and so forth, would not be effective against this threat. But then research into the theoretical density of photons and how they might be affected by certain energies in the quantum state of sub-atomic matter, and the relation of photons to tachyons led to a new theory about the–"

"_Doctor_!" Jennifer snaps.

"Yes?" The track he had been embarking on is halted by her firm tone.

"English, if you please." She's growing tired of reminding the man, and wishes he were in reach for one of Gibbs' 'wake-up calls'.

"Right. Well, we've determined that photons, light particles if you wish, do indeed have mass, but so infinitesimal that it has always been disregarded in any scientific calculation. In 2003 a theoretical upper limit on photon mass was set at ten to the negative fifty one grams–"

"Grams are weight?" Gibbs asks, just making sure. The man nods, derailed again. "How the _Hell_ can you have _negative weight_?" he asks sulfurously. This is worse than 'Geek-speak' such as Shaw and McGee would embark upon if given a chance. He'd heard clearer explanations as a kid watching 'the Great and Powerful Oz'. How does this apply to a Top Secret Government Operation?

"We have found that we _can_ increase the density of photons."

Gibbs sees, through the corner of his eye, McGee's attention go up at the revelation. Maybe there is something in it to be impressed by, he'll wait and see. "The power required is tremendous," Shaw continues, "but it can be done. Jumping straight to the bottom line: using all the energy we could raise with our own systems and all the power supplies of the base, we managed to compress a 1 nanosecond pulse to 1/50,000 of a microgram."

x

The information doesn't seem particularly momentous; but, "I believe the gentleman behind you is beginning to understand our Project."

It's not hard to guess which of the two 'gentlemen' Shaw refers to. They turn to McGee, whose face still reflects quiet awe. It must have been momentous after all. "Spit it out, McGee," Gibbs directs. The man can at least translate what he has heard into English.

McGee knows better than to mention 'scales of mass' or even the 'wave-particle duality phenomenon' that had settled the question of the nature of light itself. Not to Gibbs. "Boss, photons have no mass to speak of, that's why you can turn on your living room light and not obliterate everything in a thousand mile radius, including down."

This is more impressive – and _finally_ clear! 'Top Secret' and 'Need to Know' are finally starting to take their places.

"I understand that, in your professions, you deal extensively in ballistics," Shaw continues.

"Yes." Gibbs does not bother to mention that, as a former Marine sniper, he dealt a great deal with ballistics.

"Okay, picture the effect at point of impact of one of your bullets moving at 186,262 _miles per_ _second_."

x

The image is not a pretty one. In ballistics, the damage done at point of impact is figured in terms of kinetic energy, which in simplest terms is mass multiplied by speed. A milligram of mass moving at the speed of light would obliterate _anything_ in its path. These people are creating a weapon which, obeying the laws of ballistics, is unstoppable. At this point, Gibbs has only one question. "_Why_?"

"The initial purpose of the project is as a response to the threat of 1950 DA."

"_What_?" This answer, even being the second time they've heard it, remains quite uninformative.

"Predictions are that of all the N.E.O.'s that pose a threat to Earth, 1950 DA's is the most probable."

"_What_ is an N.E.O?"

"Sorry, that's 'Near Earth Object'."

"And you couldn't have _said_ so?" Gibbs, feeling his last bit of patience burn away, turns to his 'Scientific Advisor', hoping he can put _this_ garbage into something intelligible. DiNozzo has called him 'a walking compendium of the obscure'. Gibbs is frequently glad of it.

"As the Earth orbits the sun," McGee explains, "it crosses the paths of asteroids, most following eccentric elliptical orbits about the sun. It does this every year with no problem. Meteor strikes are a daily occurrence, but the vast majority burn up in the atmosphere - 'shooting stars' - or at least lose so much of their mass that they pose no threat.

"1950 DA, however, _does _pose a significant potential threat. It's a kilometer in diameter and will not burn up completely."

"So?"

"When it does, it will strike with a force equivalent to 50,000 Hiroshima-type bombs. When Mount Saint Helens blew, the ash traveled to cover most of the western states. _T__his _will probably blot out the sun all over the Earth for weeks. If it hits in the ocean, the tsunami that will spread over much of the planet will be about a _mile_ high. By comparison, the tsunami that devastated most of the countries bordering the Indian Ocean the day after Christmas 2004 was a hundred feet."

"What are the chances of this rock hitting us?"

"In 2032, about 0.5 percent. It'll increase in statistical probability over 50 year intervals and become a theoretical certainty in 2880."

"2880?" They are planning for a disaster in _800 years_?

"March 17."

"That'll screw up the parade," DiNozzo quips.

Gibbs' caustic reply is cut off by the voice behind him. "That risk in 2032 of 1 in 200 is considered too high to sit back and do nothing. Our project was one of several assigned to come up with a viable solution. We decided five years ago that rockets carrying nuclear warheads were out of the question, not only because of limitations of range but the possibility of irradiating vast areas of the Earth from very literal fallout.

"Furthermore, if we did not accomplish complete destruction or at least significant disruption of the target, the new courses of any material large enough to pose a significant threat could outstrip our resources. Something might get through large enough to cause significant loss of life. Our mandate doesn't allow this possibility as an option. We are charged to destroy the target completely before it gets in range of rockets or conventional weapons. The PDC is capable of numerous shots at immense distances. Where a rocket would take days to deliver its payload at a sufficient distance to assure Earth's safety, this weapon can reach it in minutes. The sun is 93 million miles away, light takes 6 minutes to reach us. While the effective range of the PDC has yet to be determined through practical tests, since the photons would now be subject to physical laws of motion and energy that were insignificant to that point, we estimate the effective range for practical targeting to be 5.2387 AUs and all we need is 'line of sight' targeting."

"All right, you've convinced me this is a good thing; saving the planet and all that." He's not going to ask what an AU is, he can find out later from McGee without risking another fifty sentences. "So why were two of your most senior scientists murdered?"

"I wish I knew, Agent Gibbs. I really do."

"Well, you're a scientist. Do what scientists do. Theorize!"

"I can't."

DiNozzo steps forward. "How can we be sure they were targeted because of this program?" He's is still not convinced, either of the science or the situation.

Shaw looks out at them uncomfortably. "Because - because they are not the only ones unaccounted for."

x

"_What_?" Gibbs does not _quite _shout, but only because all the Agents are linked together and he'd deafen them all.

"Jack Carson didn't report for work yesterday morning and no one has been able to reach him."

"And you tell us this _now_?"

"I had to make you cognizant of the overall situation. I was leading up to it–"

"Lead _faster_!"

"We didn't think anything was seriously wrong until we heard about Captain Morrison and Lieutenant Stratton this morning. This following our first major successful test has us worried."

"Why?"

Shaw looks especially uncomfortable. "Agent Gibbs, the PDC Mark 9 is a mobile weapon. Granted it takes a flatbed truck to haul it and the power consumption is enough to drain a small town, but it _can_ be directed at ground based targets."

This thought is particularly disturbing. "I _trust_ you have it secure?" Gibbs asks, trusting no such thing.

Shaw had looked uncomfortable before, he now is doubly so. "Well, you see, that's the problem. The PDC Mark 9 is secure - it would take a truck to get it off the Naval Station - but after what happened to Captain Morrison we went looking for the others, at first to tell them - and when we couldn't find Jack we tracked his activities and we found, on reviewing the access records of the files, that they had been copied to hard media."

"_What_ had been copied?"

"The technical specifications, all the plans for the PDC Mark 9. He copied them three days ago and he's been missing since yesterday."

x

Gibbs cannot believe the incompetence of the supposedly educated man. He doesn't waste his breath to ask why this had not been reported immediately. He knows the answer; almighty secrecy.

"_How_ the Hell did he get them out? Aren't you people supposed to be searched every time you leave?"

"Yes."

"Well then, how did he get them _out_? Who the Hell is in charge of searching you people?" Even before the question is fully past his lips he's sure he knows the answer.

"Jack Carson."

Gibbs glances at Jenny. "Mexico is looking so good right now." He turns on the uncomfortable Scientist. "What _Moron_ decided Security was to be a scientific matter?"

"We can't leave it for Navy personnel. If these plans fell into the wrong han–"

"_They ARE in the wrong hands_!" Shepherd, DiNozzo, McGee and David yank their headphones off too late to protect their ears. "How many _others_ of your team are unaccounted for?"

"Three," he quails under the Agent's deadly stare. "It's the Labor Day Weekend, many of us live off-base."

"You'll send their names, addresses and complete files to us immediately," Gibbs commands.

"I'm not sh–"

"_Immediately_, Doctor!" Shaw gets the sense that if he does not, the Agent will charge down to him and drag the information out of his throat. "In the meantime, no one leaves your Bunker for _any_ reason. You have your meals sent in if you have to but you all _stay_ there until we let you out."

Gibbs gives a sharp signal to the Operators stationed at the left wall and the sound is cut off. They can still see the man standing uncomfortably in a sea of white, but neither side can hear the other. He turns to Shepherd, but only to speak in 'passing'.

"That egghead _imbecile _has just admitted that the ultimate weapon could be out there somewhere. McGee, you talk to him, you _wring_ every bit of information there is out of him: names, habits of his crew, how this can be used by a foreign power - hell, you leave him ready for _Ducky_when you're done! Then get downstairs and help us track down these people."

"Got it, boss."

The last thing McGee sees as Gibbs leads the rest of the team up the ramp is the face of Jenny Shepherd. He can clearly read the message in her eyes before she turns and walks out. McGee takes his place before the center of the screen and takes a moment to prepare himself for the Interrogation of the rattled man. Before he replaces his earphone and microphone and nods to the Operator across the room to restore the sound, he hears in his mind the silent message Jenny had given him regarding how to proceed.

'Channel Gibbs.'

xxx

In a Post Office 17 miles away a tall blond man, clad in a brown leather jacket open against the late Summer heat, steps up to a row of mailboxes. He pulls open a door which has been left unlocked. The brown envelope he removes contains neither name nor return address. He tears open the end, looks inside but doesn't remove the contents.

He tucks the envelope into the inner pocket of his jacket, exits the building, boards his black motorcycle and carries away the 250 used and non-sequential $100 bills.


	7. Iceman

Chapter Seven  
Iceman

Dawn Caldwell, wearing her light blue windbreaker, had left NCIS Headquarters after an entertaining lunch with the delightfully flustered Jimmy Palmer. He'd fallen victim to her teasing charms so completely that she felt bad about not following through with her 'offers'. She thought, however, that Abby would be furious if she did. She's not quite sure why this should be, but she'd decided it was best to go with her instincts.

The warm walk to the front gate of the base had been invigorating. The Navy Yard as a smorgasbord of Seamen and by the time the cab had come to the front gate Dawn was enjoying the day immensely. She rides the cab into the city, gets out in the middle of Washington's most famous region, and there begins her tour of the highlights. Having seen the Lincoln Memorial and other sights, she's presently on a public tour of the 'approved' areas of the J. Edgar Hoover building; FBI Headquarters.

Unfortunately, she hadn't been to the rest room in a considerable time and is very distracted during the tour. When the group passes a washroom, she ducks in, hoping that if she rushes through everything she can still dash after them.

Working as quickly as possible, she fulfills her needs, washes and, clutching her light jacket in her hand, she brushes her miniskirt straight, yanks open the door, dashes out and slams into a man.

x

He's driven back by the collision, falling back several steps before he rights himself. It allows Dawn an instant to perceive him and to fully appreciate what a klutz she's been. "I'm so _sorry_!" She exclaims. "I didn't see you!"

"Obviously," he retorts, considerably annoyed. He's her height, with a deeply receding hairline and a sour expression. He wears a long though light trench coat and has caught his hat before it hit the floor. He puts it back on his head and his look morphs into a glare.

Dawn senses this is not a man who smiles easily and she has immediately gotten onto his bad side. "I'm _sorry,_" she repeats, "I was rushing to catch up to my tour."

He glances in the direction the last tour group would have gone, they're long vanished. Then his eyes catch the plastic card attached to her blouse pocket. "That's the wrong ID," he tells her, voice heavy with accusation.

She looks down and is even more embarrassed to realize she has failed to return her 'NCIS Visitor' Pass after her entertaining lunch with Jim Palmer. It's clearly not intended for FBI Headquarters. "I'm sorry," she repeats, "but I was visiting my friend Abby and forgot to return it."

"You know Abby Sciuto?" the man asks, annoyance transmuting into interest.

Dawn smiles. "She's my oldest friend. We grew up together."

"Oh,_ well_, any friend of Abby…" he pauses, considers. Glancing at a passing brunette woman in a black business dress, he addresses her. "Marta, would you do me a favor? You busy?"

"No, sir," the woman replies.

"I'm running to a meeting or I'd do it myself. Would you take Miss …" he glances at the blonde who'd nearly knocked him on his bum.

"Caldwell."

"Miss Caldwell down to Security and see she gets a _proper_ pass? Then see that she gets the 'VIP' tour."

"Yes, sir."

"_Thank_ you!" Dawn exclaims, utterly amazed and barely knowing what to say. She'd expected to be shown the door, not to be given the keys to the Agency.

"No problem. Call it 'Interdepartmental courtesy'. And when you see Abby, Gibbs and the others, be sure to tell her Tobias Fornell says 'hello'."

"I sure will."

He touches his finger to the brim of his hat and is quickly gone. Dawn turns to the black dressed woman, finding her staring after the man in amazement.

"Well, I'll be," Marta mutters. "He's human." The woman turns her attention to Dawn, evidently seeking insight.

"Friend of a friend?" Dawn guesses, shrugging helplessly. "I just smiled at him."

Marta considers. "I'll have to try that."

xxx

Doctor Shaw has been wise enough to have the Personnel files of the three UA scientists faxed to NCIS Headquarters without delay. The pages start spewing out of the machine moments after Gibbs comes down the steps following his private conversation in Director Shepherd's office.

Gibbs is gratified to know his former partner will use all the influence she has, in light of this potential violation of National Security, to get his team what clearance she can. He knows the FBI, CIA, NSA; the entire Alphabet soup will be hot to find the records of 'Operation: Dragonfire' and they're welcome to it. NCIS' job is to track down and stop a murderer.

Taking the pages that have already come out of the fax, he splits the completed record of Joseph Parseur from the incomplete data on Miranda Higgins, dropping the former on DiNozzo' s desk, the latter upon Ziva's with instructions to obtain the rest and pass the last file on to McGee. He then proceeds to his own desk.

Set in the middle of it is a 12 inch square white and blue box, the distinctive design of Federal Express. It bears white shipping labels indicating the source as Kansas. He knows immediately what it contains and considers the source to be ironically appropriate for this 'Wizard of Oz' case. Sitting down behind his desk he takes his folding knife out of his pocket, slices open the box and removes the wrapping.

The blade, with its attached black leather strap, is a work of art. Eight inches long and nearly four wide, it curves as though the tongue of flame from whence it gets its name. Red, orange and yellow worked into the gleaming metal, the multitude of snaps on either black strap assuring a secure fit regardless of the size of its wearer, the two edged weapon is as elegant as it is deadly.

"Sweet," DiNozzo comments, impressed.

"_Illegal_, DiNozzo. I just wanted to see how easily something like this could be obtained. I'm not keeping it."

"Well, if you're concerned about having it, I'll be happy to take it off your hands - or wrist."

"Sorry," he tells the man, not particularly regretfully as he drops it back into the box, "already promised to Abby."

"She gets all the best toys," he mutters sotto vocé, not regretfully either.

"It's not a _toy_, DiNozzo."

"But if you want one, you only have to order it." Ziva points out 'helpfully', her mildly mocking tone offering none at all.

"Actually, this case has opened up a new and previously unexplored dimension for me," he tells her, setting up for some mockery of his own.

"Just don't have it delivered here," Gibbs warns him, tucks the box under his arm and heads for the elevator, "it's _against _the rules."

He blithely ignores his having been the only one to break that rule.

xxx

Abby looks up from her work and smiles when she sees Gibbs walk through her outer door, carrying a large coffee cup in one hand, a larger red and white 'Caf-Pow!' cup in the other and a larger still box tucked under his arm. Her hands move in a complicated series of gestures, into which he reads //Gibbs, you're right on time,// she accepts her cup and taps it to Gibbs' in a quiet toast, takes a hefty draw of the overpowering liquid, sets the cup down and signs, //you always know just when I want to dazzle you.//

He puts his own cup down, freeing his hands for a short series of gestures, letting her read //It's a gift.//

//One of your many,// she 'quips' with her hands, then picks up and drinks more of the staggering caffeine concoction.

//Speaking of gifts,// he signs, picks up and hands her the box he had brought. She sets down the 'Caf-Pow!', pulling the box open, drawing out the 'Flamebird'.

"_Nice_!" She says admiringly. She straps the black leather onto her right wrist, the many opposing snaps giving her a perfect fit. The curving blade rests against her palm, the point of the deadly weapon reaching to just a quarter inch short of her middle fingertip. She tilts her hand back and turns it slowly, admiring the play of the lab lights along the multi-colored metal. "This'll go so _well_ with my–"

He holds up his hand. "I don't want to know." He expects that whatever word was about to come out of her mouth, he would have to arrest her for it.

He has, however, no doubt that the weapon is in the best of hands - or hand.

Abby undoes the strap, opens the top drawer of her desk and places the weapon inside. She closes it again and leans up, giving Gibbs a kiss on his cheek, then brings her fingertips up to her own lips for an instant before bringing her hand back away. //Thank you.//

x

"Now, what have you got for - what do you want to tell me?" He amends the question quickly, having no time for what she would have said in answer to his former phrasing. Her widened smile shows she had been ready for him and compliments him on his outmaneuvering her.

"I got an ID off the print from Red Sonja's sword. First off, did you know Lt. Stratton's moniker is 'Black Sonja'He as, that on the web she's known as 'Sonja at Black Sonja dot com' and that she runs the most _outrageous_ smut fiction site that it has ever been my illicit pleasure to peruse?"

"I didn't know that." He feels he could have done without finding out, except that in a murder investigation - in every investigation in fact - every small piece of evidence is important. Now he would need a list of those who also 'peruse' her site. Since that is probably going to have to run into the thousands, who to assign it to? McGee had done the last one, he supposes DiNozzo will have to run down the list this time.

"Some of her work nearly blew out my monitor. This is much better than that 'Naughty Naughty Neighbor' website murder last year; _this _at least has some quality, maybe only because you have to read and imagine it, rather than watch it. The woman was a good writer. She had high standards, but she also knew what she wanted, I'll give her that; even if she couldn't find anyone in the real world who measured up," she finishes with real sympathy.

"What is with these...?" he shuts himself up, the question on his mind being light years from 'politically correct' - not that he'd ever cared.

"The stories are all on her site, and she's set it so you can access and read but not download or save them. At least the average reader can't; I solved the lockout in a minute and a quarter. Membership is $5 a week, self renewing every month so if you forget to cancel you're going to get hit with $20 a month until you do."

"How much money are we talking about?"

"It's a very popular site with loads of 'reflective links'. You know: I'll advertise your site if you'll advertise mine. It's good stuff, the woman can write. She's got at this moment 6,494 active members so this week she pulled in $32,470 tax free."

"What do you mean 'tax free'?" Even 'Naughty Naughty Neighbors' had to pay taxes.

"She's a clever little minx; I'll give her that too; she didn't confine her fiction to her stories. Right now the IRS is getting really pissed at 'Deana Lansbury' of Foster Grove, Iowa; except from what I've seen there is no 'Deana Lansbury', no 'Foster Grove' and I have my own suspicions about 'Iowa'."

"Did she write it all?" He considers it probably too much to hope for that she, like Jamie Lee Carr aka 'Raine', had a partner and / or a 'Page Master'.

"You bet your firm and sexy ass she did;" Abby assures him with a smile, "and using 'Global Search and Replace' she can do easy uploads of 'new' files too. I've seen the same story featuring a Cowgirl, a female Cop and a 'Sword and Sorcery' Shield Maiden. You'll never _guess_ what happens when she loses her shield!"

"I'll let you know if I care."

"I noticed there's no 'Navy' person; I guess she didn't want to bite the hand of the ones who give her her pocket change."

With a prospective weekly income of $32,000 plus; any legitimate income from the Navy must look like 'pocket change'. "With the laptop now I could upload any number of them to your desk; just let me know the categories." The glare she gets is expressive enough, "Dawn even read some of it and it got Jimmy Palmer into all sorts of trouble."

"How did–" he stops, almost falling for her trap. Time to turn her off. "What about the _print_?" he presses, not really wanting to hear any more about the sex life of the woman. As Ducky would urge, 'let the dead rest in peace'.

x

"I got one good one, as I told you," she assures him, switching back to her 'Forensic Scientist persona' with the facility of long practice. It impresses him every time he sees it. "As careful as our killer was not to leave any traces, he must have had a moment of carelessness, because I lifted a beauty off the blade, up near the guard, and _now_ I have a face for it."

x

She touches a control on her computer and the large plasma screen comes alive. Upon it is depicted the image of a man apparently taken by a surveillance camera. A moment later she changes the picture to bring it back and show the perspective, a dark suited man leaving a building, passing a red coated doorman. She then returns to the close-up. The man is Caucasian, middle aged with close cropped blonde hair and a prominent scar on his left cheek.

"Meet Ronald Adolphus, a.k.a. 'the Iceman' because he puts you in the cooler. Perhaps the meanest S.O.B. on the East Coast and not all that well liked on the West. He's a professional Hit Man suspected of at least 32 hits in the last year _alone_. Evidence nil, convictions zip, he's been spotted all over the world but no one has been able to lay a finger on him. But when he turns up, people die."

"Why has no one been able to pin anything on him?"

"Because, Gibbs, he's got one rule - _you_ provide the weapon. He'll use it, but if there's any evidence it points back to you. He has no connection to the victim, no motive. _No one_ has been able to pin anything to him. His trademark is hit-and-run. He'll be walking down the street, stab his mark without slowing down and keep on going. He doesn't call attention to himself, just leaves a dead body behind him."

"Tidy."

"Payments have always been in cash, his rate is $25,000 per mark; the money to be left at a specific time in your mailbox, your office, on the seat of your car, your safe, your safe deposit box with your key and your fingerprints. Contracts are verbal; contacts are made through the Mob. He works with the Mob, but not _for_ any Family. Capone wants to hit Dillinger; the Iceman's the one to call. Dillinger wants Capone on ice, the Iceman will chill him.

"Needless to say, people are very careful when they call for ice. He'll do your enemy, but you'll go down if there's any trace. Only one man ever tried to rat on him; there wasn't enough left of him for Ducky to construct one of his 'meat puzzles' because they're still _looking _for the pieces. They've been found in 19 cities between Detroit and San Diego."

"Nice person."

"I'll pass on meeting him."

xxx

"Gibbs," Ziva announces with vast satisfaction as soon as she sees him striding into the 'bullpen', "my Interpol contact has come through, we are looking for–"

"The Iceman," he tells his team, not breaking stride.

"Cool." DiNozzo says, halting him.

Ziva tries not to let her frustration show; thinking of the hours of work that had been anticipated. She fails. 'Why doesn't he just use his crystal ball 24/7 and I can go on vacation?'

"Who's the 'Iceman'?" McGee asks, cutting off Gibbs' reprimand of Tony's glib insertion. Before he can reply, DiNozzo picks up the narrative, amazed the other has never heard of him.

"Ron Adolphus, only the biggest legend among hit men; a hit man's hit man. Come to think of it, he's trimmed the ranks of that rather exclusive club on occasion. You want someone whacked, the Iceman'll chill him, no questions, no misses. When I was in Baltimore, he stopped one of my biggest cases cold by chilling four witnesses in ten hours, with bupkis on evidence. One in the lavatory of his workplace, another at a restaurant, a third waiting for a bus and the last _on_ a bus. Witnesses never even knew the people next to them were dead. I've always wanted to thaw out the Iceman," he concludes longingly.

"Well, maybe you'll get your chance. McGee," he summons the man to him and when he gets close Gibbs reaches out and slaps the back of his head, "I told you to pick apart Stratton's laptop. So why is it I find Abby doing your job?"

"I'm sorry, boss, when I saw that what was on it had no bearing–"

"Who _told_ you what she was doing had no bearing on why she was killed?"

"Well, I–"

"I decide the allocation of resources for this team. Any time you feel things can be handled differently or your time is better spent pursuing another line, you come to me and I'll listen - but you do not take that upon yourself, got that?"

"Got it, boss."

"Good, because if I have to tell you again–"

"You won't–"

"Good. Now tell me about this weapon."

x

McGee feels like he's dodged a bullet by a hair's breadth. "According to Dr. Shaw, it's a 'Photon Density Converter, Mark 9.' They've been researching and developing it for years. Funding is secret, so secretly even the House Appropriations Committee either doesn't know about it or claims they don't; they probably think they really _are_ spending $42,000 for a toilet seat." His voice carries his feelings about just how likely the prospect of _that_ is. Gibbs won't waste time trying to decode the workings, such as they are, of the 'Civil Servant mind'.

"In a nutshell, they've found how to increase the density of light particles - photons - into something significant. On a scale of zero to a million, zero to one qualifies as 'significant'. When you're dealing with objects moving at 186,262 miles or 299,792.458 kps, you don't need a lot of mass. Fire a 1/10,000 second pulse at a battleship - if you can _see_ a target you can't miss it - and you've got a hundred tons of iron filings spread out for miles beyond. It's mobile on a flatbed truck and the power demands are enormous, but plans are in the works to use nuclear power in a future model."

"Fantasy weapons and ray guns," Gibbs muses. "When did the world get weird?"

"About 5,000 years ago, boss," DiNozzo interjects.

"That's very funny, DiNozzo," Gibbs' tone makes it clear that it is not.

"What I want to know," DiNozzo continues, "is how the hell they solved the backblast?" This is one of the main reasons why he does not believe a word of this.

Newton's Third Law of Motion says 'for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction', so a light-speed pulse should send the weapon to China or into orbit. More to the point, it should annihilate the operators even before it destroys the target.

"Dr. Shaw told me that they sol–"

"What word on Joseph Parseur?" Gibbs asks DiNozzo. He doesn't particularly care about the science; that is the Scientists' problem and if they solved it then they solved it. _He_ had assigned the team the task of tracking down the three unaccounted-for scientists only moments before going down to see Abby and is more interested in the solution to _that_ puzzle.

"I'm just on my way out to his place. No answer on his phone, no activity on his charge card in a week."

"Go." He turns to Ziva. "Miranda Higgins?"

"She left work Friday evening; no one has seen her since."

"Track her." Gibbs turns to McGee. "Mark Esposito and if you tell me–"

"I have a GPS lock on his cell phone; he's en route back to Norfolk. I spoke to him, told him to make himself invisible until he gets back to Bunker 1, then to crawl into a hole and pull it in after himself."

"Good. You're with me. We'll check out Jack Carson's place."

xxx

Tony DiNozzo is about to knock on the door of the third floor walkup when, even against the nerve jangling sounds of the screaming baby filling the building from the apartment below, he senses something is wrong. It's the smell that wafts through the spaces in the doorframe, not so overpowering as it would be with the door open but pungent nonetheless. It's a familiar one, a distinctive scent he had come to know excruciatingly well since his first days with the Baltimore PD and many times since in his years with NCIS. The smell of blood mingled with urine and worse - the distinctive stench of death.

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing the folded cloth to his nose and mouth while wishing he had a second one and determining never to leave home without that second, he's left with a quandary. Scowling, he uses the handkerchief to very carefully turn the knob, slaps it back to his face again as he pushes the door with his elbow.

The body of Joseph Parseur lies on its back in the short hallway. He DiNozzo barely has time to take this in before the effluvia slaps his eyes. Backing away, he surveys the body from the 'safe' distance of the short hallway outside.

Parseur lies on his back, the dagger handle protruding from his throat. A pool of blood has spread in an irregular circle from one side of the hall to the other, forming an obstacle it will be difficult to traverse.

x

Holding his breath while thinking the most ungracious thoughts of someone who would keep an apartment sealed in the heat of the Labor Day Weekend, he carefully steps into the apartment, edges past the body, takes a wide step past the pooled blood. As he does so, he sees the reason for the wash of blood. The blades, two of them, protrude from the back of Parseur's neck, gravity aiding in draining the body even after the man's heart had stopped.

Moving carefully, holding his breath tightly, he tries not to come into contact with anything as he steps into the living room and to the windows. There's an air conditioner in one, the controls indicating a timed activation. He uses the end of his pen to switch the controls to manual, turn it on and set it to full power exhaust. Then he goes to the next window, uses the cloth to unlock and open the window wide. He sticks his head far out the window and his breath explodes out of his strained lungs.

Drawing several gargantuan breaths, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, still leaning out of the open window. It only rings twice before he hears the familiar curt response. "Boss, I'm at Parseur's place; too late. The Iceman has made his delivery."

//Call Ducky and get him down there; I'll be in as soon as we're done.//

"Right; I'll tell him to bring a bottle of ammonia and some gas masks."

xx

Gibbs closes his phone, glances at McGee in the passenger seat. "DiNozzo's walked into a ripe one."

"I just hope we don't," McGee agrees fervently. There's nothing worse than a dead body in an enclosed space in summer, unless it's an _old_ dead body in an enclosed space in summer.

"No promises," Gibbs assures him as they pull to a stop in front Jack Carson's one story house in suburban Washington. The home is distinctive by its very indistinctiveness; it looks like any other white one-family bungalow they'd ever been to. The building is about four feet above the level of the street, fronted by a lawn of suburban grass, only an irregular line of irregular flagstones providing a token semblance of a path to the door. They walk up the very slight incline along the flagstones set at an uncomfortable pace length. Wearing their black jackets with NCIS Federal Agent prominently displayed on their backs, gold representations of their shields emblazoned on the left sides of their chests and NCIS boldly embroidered upon their black caps, they are the very epitome of authority. It's necessary this time for it looks very much like they're going to have to gain admittance through less than customary methods.

Neither man particularly believes knocking on the door will produce any result. The rolled newspapers that dot the lawn behind them tell them that very clearly. Each believes there's an even chance the missing Jack Carson is either the prime mover in this mystery or the Iceman's first victim. The next few moments will answer that question.

Gibbs knocks loudly upon the white door, not expecting an answer and so is not disappointed. Looking for an open window, he finds none. Without even a shrug, he goes down on one knee and pulls a set of tools from the inner Velcro-lined pocket of his black jacket. He's about to insert one of them into the keyhole when he looks up impatiently at the Agent standing next to him. "McGee!" He calls as though the man were asleep on his feet.

"Yes, boss?"

Gibbs struggles not to roll his eyes. "Don't just stand there; call Lee and get me a damn warrant."

x

Gibbs doesn't wait for the call to be over before he unlocks the door, but he does wait until McGee has put his phone away and they have both drawn their guns before, standing on opposite sides of the door, he pushes it open.

A long object flies out the door between them with a loud '_swheet'_ . They watch the spear shoot across the lawn at chest height and lose altitude as it sails. It bounces upon the hood of Gibbs' blue Charger - fortunately for Carson without marking the paint - before it bounces across the road, rolls end over end and clatters to an eventual stop on the lawn of the house across the road.

Gibbs and McGee look at one another, then across the road at the deadly length of metal-tipped wood, then back again. They both cautiously look in, find a metal launcher set up four feet into the room, the control attached to a cord tied to the door. They look back to the spear across the road, then to one another. "Well?" Gibbs finds his voice first. "Go _get_ it!"

x

The two men stand in the doorway, McGee holding the spear upright in a gloved hand, neither willing to take a step within. They're cautious of more booby-traps, but there is little need to enter: the view from the doorstep is breathtaking enough.

Every bit of each wall is covered with weapons; a staggering collection of swords, daggers, knives, shields, throwing stars, maces, scimitars, broad swords, rapiers, claymores, familiar bladed weapons of every description in addition to more elegant and imaginative designs, only two of which Gibbs recognizes as Klingon bat'hleth swords and d'k tahg daggers. It is altogether an appalling number and variety of weapons.

"I don't believe it," he confesses.

"I'm so glad Tony's not here," McGee muses, holding the spear in his latex gloved hand, "the first words out of his mouth would be, in a Mexican accent, 'my dear guests, I am your host, Mr. Roarke; welcome to Fantasy Armory!'"

Gibbs looks at his friend. "Thanks, 'Tony'."

"Sorry, Boss."

Gibbs is about to tell him again about apologies, but changes his mind. With the body of Parseur on the ground and a warehouse of weaponry in front of him, there is little time for much else.

But it's not the number and variety of weapons displayed here that concerns him. What is more unsettling is the number of empty spaces dotting the room. Gibbs seeing no point in continuing when his count passes twenty.

xx

Miranda Higgins steps out of her townhouse and descends the long flight of steps down to the street. She's put on a light blue windbreaker over her red blouse and black skirt, but sees no need, in the warm afternoon, to close the garment. Reaching the street, she turns right and starts toward the corner.

An odd rushing, swishing sound behind her makes her turn in time for the long sharp blade of the spinning 'batarang' to imbed itself deep into her throat. Miranda, shocked by the sudden pain, is knocked backward by the impact. She lands hard on the cement, her hands reach desperately for the metal imbedded into her. Choking on blood, she pries at the blade, unable to pull it loose. Then there's a man standing over her.

She tries to appeal for help, unable to speak, reaching for help. The blonde man comes down on one knee beside her, reaches into his leather jacket and pulls out a long wide silver blade. Horrified, she can't believe it's a Klingon d'k tahg. Two short spikes snap out from the base of the wide dagger blade at the push of a concealed button.

Miranda can't even shriek past the 'batarang' buried deep in her throat as the wide gleaming blade slams down and cuts her heart almost in half.

The very last thing Miranda Higgins hears is a woman's strident yell; "Federal Agent - _Freeze_, Iceman!"

x

Ziva David is halfway out of her car, arms extended over the driver side door, gun trained on the brown leather jacket of the man kneeling upon the sidewalk, but even as she yells the legs of the woman, all she can see past his body, have stilled. Ziva knows she's too late. Too late.

Coming around her door, she steps past the front of her car and onto the sidewalk, stops six feet behind the still man. They're on a side street, but though there are few people about her yell has attracted too much attention and curious onlookers stupidly approach from both sides like mindless zombies in a bad horror movie.

"Federal Agent - NCIS!" She yells again, this time at the growing crowd. "Get _Back_!" When the less mindless ones withdraw - a step - she gives up on them and gives her full attention to her quarry. "You! Iceman! Raise your hands. High! Get them up!" She is gratified he at least has a brain. "Stand - up - _slowly_."

She keeps her gun aimed directly at his heart, confident she can empty her clip into that organ before he can make an unfortunate move and _hoping_ he will try something. "Take a step back. Another." He is not foolish enough to resist. "Stop there." He complies. "Now, know that if I even _think_ you are going to do something, I will shoot you. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he answers simply, tonelessly.

"Then very slowly, very carefully, shrug out of that jacket _without_ using your hands." She does not care how long it takes him to accomplish this, or how difficult it is, for when the material falls she sees the two foot long sword in a black nylon sheath strapped upright to the middle of his back. "Now, very slowly kneel down. Slowly!" she cautions when he moves too quickly for her liking.

"Breathe hard and you die," she assures him as she reaches far out with her free hand, draws the long gleaming double edged blade out and tosses it back where it clangs to the cement. She stands a step behind him, just out of reach, her gun trained on his back. "Put your hands on top of your head, fingers interlaced, palms up! Spread your legs, wide. Wider. Keep spreading until I tell you to stop or something breaks off."

When she is satisfied, he's kneeling with his knees as far apart as anyone short of a cheerleader or exotic dancer can manage with pants on, but she's still cautious. This is the legendary 'Iceman', she's making the arrest alone and will not relax her guard before he is _on_ ice, preferably on Ducky's table. She considers that the smartest, the safest, thing for her to do is to shoot him in cold blood – though in front of twenty witnesses Gibbs might well have a problem with that.

Pulling a set of handcuffs from her back pocket, she takes a step closer, just in reach to snap the metal ring about his right wrist when she hears a soft '_ffttt'_ and she feels a sudden pain in her left leg. She has only an instant to glance down and find two black wires extending from his belt into her thigh through her pants. The electricity blasts through her!

Unable to move, her muscles locked by the massive charge, she cannot escape, cannot move, feels as though her eyes are about to burst out of her head. It goes on forever and the only thought she can manage is of 'Electro' and that damned elevator at the Comic Art Convention before she stops seeing, stops feeling, stops thinking.

Expended, the searing current stops and Ziva topples backward, never feeling her body slam into the cement with bone-jarring force. She never feels the wires jerk out of her flesh, never feels anything.

Ronald Adolphus stands up and retrieves his jacket and the blade. It can still be used for another day. Returning it to the scabbard on his back, he walks away, pulling his leather jacket back on, confident that the men and women he passes will never be able to agree on a description of his face.

The woman is dead, but she wasn't on his list and he had already done one 'two-for', so he is not pleased by having to do another, even if it had been for his own safety. He continues walking, having never bothered to look at the dead woman's face.

x

Silently, one of the growing crowd steps up to the motionless woman, reaches out and takes her wrist in his hand, feeling for a pulse that is not there. He looks up at the others and shakes his head. Another woman comes closer, kneels down beside them.

xx

Leroy Gibbs and Timothy McGee have finished searching Jack Carson's living room armory for records, documents, anything that might point to him and the PDC. They're about to begin an inspection of his den when Gibbs' phone rings. He pulls it out, glancing at the name displayed as he opens it. "Yes, Director." The cold look on his face stops McGee in his tracks. The younger man is ready when Gibbs returns his phone to his pocket and stalks out of the room. "Come on!"

They sprint from the building and Gibbs is halfway to the car before McGee catches up. "What's wrong?"

They're in the car before Gibbs answers. "Metro PD called Shepherd. Ziva took on the Iceman," he announces, slamming his door.

"_And_?" The shriek of tires and cloud of vaporized rubber precedes by a nanosecond the vehicle's launch. McGee struggles to reach his belt.

"She _lost_!"


	8. Outrageous

Chapter Eight  
Outrageous

Both men remain silent, Gibbs' full attention on the road before him as the cars flash backward past him. McGee's attention is on Ziva. He clings to the handle over the passenger door as Gibbs weaves through expressway traffic, blasts past cars as though they were stationary instead of doing the posted limit.

Gibbs shoves his car through the afternoon traffic, slices into spaces with half-inches to spare, slashes across lanes, rockets to 98 in 50 zones.

McGee wishes he would hurry.

They turn off at the exit in a shriek of tires. McGee clings to the handle as he feels himself almost pressed out the side door. Gibbs locks his horn and slows to 80 on the side streets.

When they approach their destination, they see the flashing lights. Gibbs stomps the brake at the last instant, the Charger skids over 70 feet to a shrieking halt as both men brace themselves against the powerful deceleration. The EMTs have been standing beside a long white sheet stretched upon the ground, scurry away from the piercing screech and dive for cover.

McGee's partially out of the car first, but when he sees the long motionless white sheet and the distinctive outline of a woman's body, his heart turns to ice.

He stares at the sheet, gasping for breath that will not come. He can't move. He tries to fight the tears that threaten to consume him.

Life, hope, love are crushed and left dead under that sheet.

x

"Tim?" A voice distracts him from the horror and he realizes with a detached late part of his brain that this is the third time he's heard it. He looks to his right, to the two uniformed men talking to two women - to the two policemen with a black haired woman - to _Ziva_ talking to the police!

Tim McGee has, in his career, done many unprofessional things - and he grants he will probably do many more - but he knows none of them will exceed his charging the distance in an eighth of a second, crashing into his beloved so hard she would have been knocked off her feet except for his arms wound tightly around her body and whatever exclamation she might have made at the collision silenced by his lips on hers.

Gibbs closes his door and walks over more sedately, not letting any witness see how his heart had been slamming in his chest and had almost stopped when he'd seen the sheet. He exchanges bemused looks with the two uniformed policemen and the unknown blonde woman with them, for the first time in such a situation feeling no compulsion to slap the back of a head.

x

"What happened?" Gibbs asks sharply from inches away from the duo, sufficient to tell them that the seconds he'd allowed are over. They were the only leniency he'll allow.

In full detail Ziva reports all the facts about the death of Miranda Higgins, her capture of and subsequent defeat by the 'Iceman'. "I thought I had everything covered, the belt seemed to have nothing significant about it; I'd checked it. To say the least I was shocked."

Neither man is in a punning mood; Tim is faster with his reprimand, "You could have been killed."

"Yes, I realize that, Tim," she tells him sharply. "I also realize I have now fallen for the same trap twice, so I will appreciate your not bringing that up."

"I'm not DiNozzo," he protests.

"Fortunately Miss Parker here," she indicates the blonde woman beside her with a grateful nod, turning off her anger, "knew what to do."

"I saw a program on the Discovery Channel on helping victims of electrocution and other accidents."

"I don't know how to thank you," Tim admits gratefully, but his chaotic emotions have him turning on Ziva again, "but she wouldn't have had to if you were more–"

"_Hey_! You two ready to work?"

"We are ready, sir," Ziva reports an instant before McGee's nod.

"Fine."

However, returning to work is simply not practical. There is a body on the ground that may or may not be in NCIS jurisdiction. Presently Metro PD has the scene and a civilian has saved the life of one of his Agents and that can be no means be diminished. He already knows what Jenny Shepherd will say about this. There is very likely be a medal in the woman's future. Altogether it is a considerable time before he gets his Agents back to 'work'.

x

"That's Higgins, I take it?" he indicates the shroud covered body now being lifted into the rear of the City ME's van. Jurisdiction is to be decided at the Director / Chief level, it's out of his hands.

"Yes. I did not make it in time."

"Ya think?" He looks at McGee. "Are these weapons, the bat thingy and the dack-tang–"

"D'k tahg," McGee corrects, most unwisely to judge by Gibbs' silent glare.

"From Jack Carson's place?"

"Of the vacant spots on his walls, few were of an age to allow discoloration of the walls to be prevented, but I would say 'yes'."

"How many blank spaces were there?" He'd stopped counting at twenty five.

"Thirty four, including wooden display boards, pegs and hooks."

"And thus far 7 accounted for, one of which he still has."

It is not a happy prospect.

x

"McGee, what do you know about these people from the files? Is the 'Iceman' going to wipe out the whole team?"

"He can't, boss. Everyone else is back at th...." He trails off at Gibbs' sustained glare. "Captain Morrison was 'Project Director', presumably he knew it all. Lt. Stratton was Senior Physicist. Her work mostly concerned the practical application of the theory."

"Whose theory?"

"So far as I can tell, Dr. Parseur headed that part of the team. He was apparently not the originator of the theory, but he made major contributions to the initial outlining and planning."

"And Higgins?"

"She was the Senior Design Engineer. She was charged with constructing the various apparatus."

"And where does Carson fit into this?"

"He's on Parseur's team, the theoretical end, turning theory into construction."

"Could he recreate this weapon?"

"Doctor Shaw indicates the entire project's data files were copied so, given suitable resources, I would say 'yes'."

x

Gibbs looks at the ME's van driving away, "Ducky's tied up at Parseur's place. We're going to have to bicker over this body later but for all the evidence the body can give us we've lost to the city and their forensics lab." He'd much rather Abby had her hand in this, he trusts her far more than her counterpart, but he must use what he has, not what he wants.

"You got pictures?" he questions Ziva sharply. If she says no, he is going to teach her what being shocked really means. Fortunately she has the good sense to say 'yes'. "I'll head over to Parseur's, you two get back at the office. Things are moving too fast, too many bodies on the ground too quickly. Find Carson. No one disappears; they just think they do: bank, telephones, family, friends, enemies, girlfriends; hell, _boy_friends. _Fi__nd _him!"

"Yes, sir."

xxx

'Finding Carson' is far easier to say than to accomplish, but over the next two hours the three Field Agents, gratefully removed from the field, manage much of the Herculean task. By the time Gibbs comes up from the Autopsy at 1800, they are close.

"His cell phone has a GPS chip, but he knows that," McGee reports. "He didn't even bother to disable it, it's sitting in his house. If he's in contact with anyone, the smartest thing to have done is to geet a burn phone."

"'On-Star' reports he cancelled his service a month ago." DiNozzo takes up the narrative. "They can't even put it on for special cases, apparently he disabled it if he even kept it in his car. He has a girlfriend, or had; hasn't seen him in months - not since this project started."

"You believe her, DiNozzo?"

"No."

"Get on her," he hesitates; about to rephrase; remembering who he is dealing with, but changes his mind.

"I have researched his phone records," Ziva reports, "and his cell phone before he abandoned it shows numerous calls to an unlisted number, also an unregistered cell phone."

x

"All right, what do we know about the 'Iceman'? How did Carson hook up with him?"

"I think a better question would be _why_ did he hook up with him?" DiNozzo points out.

"If you've got something, spill it."

"Shaw told us that Carson disappeared and _then_ they found out that the files had been copied, but only after Morrison was killed. If Morrison hadn't been killed, it'd be a Missing Person case. But since they're so tip-top secret, we'd _never _have been brought into it. And if we were, it'd be next month or Christmas and my money's on Christmas. We'd probably be New Year's before we'd find out he copied files."

"So Carson tipped his hand. Why?"

"Killing everyone makes it hard to reconstruct the weapon after he sold it to al-Qaeda or whatever he's planning on doing with it." He stops, reconsiders. "But if that's his plan, he'd have deleted them and the backups, rather than just copying and stealing them.

"So what is he doing with them?"

"Gibbs? Yoo hoo, _Gibbs_?" Abby's voice sounds from the black plasma screen speakers.

"I wish she wouldn't do that," DiNozzo mutters, less put off at having been interrupted as worried that, if she can override systems from her lab to talk to them on a 'turned off' system, what can she do when it comes to listening?

McGee picks up the remote control, officially turning on the screen. Upon it, the image of Abby looking up at them from her lab table appears.

"What have you got, Abby?" Gibbs asks, knowing she cannot see them when using the overhead camera, wondering why she doesn't use the two way visual doohicky and dismissing the question because answering it would require fully understanding Abby.

"I've got something that will definitely rock your world," she promises broadly.

"Rock away."

"I have _found_ Jack Carson's hideout."

"_Where_?"

"Come on down," she makes the invitation sound juicy, "I'll tell you _all_ about it."

xxx

"I was reading 'Sonja's' writings–"

"The smug," Ziva interjects accusingly, implying Abby's time could be better spent.

"That's 'smut' and it sounds so tacky when you say it," Abby bites back.

"Five seconds, ladies." He doesn't tell them what will happen if they continue their sniping. Let implication supply the gruesome details.

"Anyhow, it's not pure fiction - shut up everybody - there's some journal aspects to it, like repeated references to a 'Jaycee' who's got a sword that will - well, better left to the imagination. But the imagination is very specific about where Sonja always meets Jaycee and they practice their jousting, so to speak. She describes landmarks which translate into reality."

x

Abby activates the plasma screen, upon which appears in the upper right corner a line figure of a tower. "She tells the exact distance and angle, relative to the sun at dawn on the equinox, from the Kings' tower." The image changes to a familiar photo of the U.S. Capital building and a thin green line appears cutting diagonally across the screen toward the lower left, disappearing two thirds of the way down the left side of the screen. "She does the same for the headquarters of the King's fleet," in the lower right a line drawing of a ship appears, "which is guess where?"

She gives no time for anyone to guess before the ship is replaced by an aerial shot of Norfolk Station, this time with a line ascending across the screen toward the upper left, intersecting the first line.

"She also gives the exact distance and angle from the 'field of swords' to where all the money in the Empire is hoarded." The Treasury building appears, its own line slicing through the first two, right at the point of the initial intersection.

"You have an address?" DiNozzo asks.

"Do I have an address," she scoffs, rattles off the P.O. Box from memory and then hands Gibbs a printout with the landmarks and lines superimposed over a D.C. map. It is a site deep in the woods beyond the Washington suburbs.

"Am I a genius or what?" she asks proudly.

Gibbs, standing next to her, leans closer. "You're a genius," he kisses her cheek, making her smile in greater pleasure as the team trails him. But as he goes out, he calls back just as the doors close: "you're also on Report for reading porn on duty."


	9. The Killing Field

Chapter Nine  
The Killing Field

The operation is carefully planned and meticulously executed. The agents face an adversary who has almost killed one of them.

Night will soon fall and the house they approach, a bungalow deep inside concealing woods, is swathed in shadow and silent as a tomb. Cautious, they approach as quietly, spread out to approach from four sides. There's a black sedan parked at an angle in front of the white building, as though the driver had been in a hurry or didn't care.

Gibbs takes the main door, Tim approaches from the right, Tony from the left, Ziva goes around to the rear. There are only a front and side door, Tony's side, so Tim and Ziva seek unlocked windows.

Fortunately, even in the deep woods far from the city, the lingering summer heat leaves Tim with two excellent choices of access. He looks in carefully, finds an empty bedroom and climbs silently inside. The room is silent and still. He reaches into his black jacket, pulls out his cell phone and uses the 'conference call' circuit to make three other phones vibrate silently. Five measured seconds later he yanks open the bedroom door, gun trained and ready simultaneous with loud splintering crashes from the building's two doors. The rear window flies upward, Ziva extends her gun into the room. Gibbs' shout "NCIS - _FREEZE_!" fills the entire building.

A pack of cigarettes is the only thing that goes flying within the inner room as the Agents converge upon Jack Carson. The man is leaps to his feet but, surrounded by four steady guns, he's smart enough to follow Gibbs' order. DiNozzo moves in, he's quickly handcuffed and pushed back into his seat.

"How did you find me?" Carson's demand comes out shaken.

"Black Sonja told us," DiNozzo replies, disappointed by the blank look on their prisoner's face.

"Who?"

"Lieutenant Carla Stratton," Ziva enlightens him.

"She's dead."

"And don't you just sound all broken up about that?" DiNozzo asks, disgusted. Carson had provided the information and the weapon that had slain her. After all that they had done in this cabin, for who knows how long, he'd betrayed her. He'd used the same sword that had defined the woman's identity. He was, possibly, the only one she ever engaged in intimate 'sword work' with. DiNozzo wonders how many times they had gone jogging together first before they had moved on to other 'exercises'.

"I'm sorry she had to die, I really am, but–"

"Save it," Gibbs commands and glances at DiNozzo. "Read him his rights."

DiNozzo tugs his gun out of his holster.

x

The unexpected motion brings all of them to high Alert - three other Sigs clear holsters within the second. No one thinks this is DiNozzo's idea of the man's Article 31 rights. "Two cigarettes, boss," he says, sparing an instant's glance at the ashtray on the table. Two smoldering butts rest in opposite directions.

"Where is he?" Gibbs demands of Carson as they rapidly scan the room. Tim had entered through the bedroom, Tony through the only other room while Gibbs and Ziva had taken the front.

"Gone."

"But not forgotten," DiNozzo completes, checking out the windows on his side of the room, then glances back at the ashtray, "I make it five minutes, tops."

"No argument from me, DiNozzo," Gibbs turns back to Carson, "Where did he go?" He doesn't believe he'll get an answer, so he's not disappointed.

Looking out the window at the setting sun, Tony isn't optimistic. "You don't suppose he left, do you?"

"Would you leave four agents on your tail when you can pick them off in the dark?" Gibbs turns off the room lights. The Agents quickly and cautiously douse every light in the building. It helps improve their night vision while shielding them from being picked off.

Outside, the sun approaches the horizon. Within a half hour it will be dark. "Unless we leave now, he'll wait until full dark. We didn't pass anyone on the road - he's out there somewhere. Ziva, stay with Carson," the woman is already behind their prisoner, "Tony, side doo–"

"I am coming with you," Ziva protests; not about to let her teammates walk into danger without her.

"You can't leave a prisoner unattended," he's annoyed at her attempt to supersede him.

"Yeah," Carson agrees, "you can't leave a pri -." Ziva presses her arm about his throat, applies pressure with her other hand, continues until Carson slumps down in his seat.

"That gives me about fifteen minutes."

Gibbs shakes his head. "I'll fire you later. Come on, you're with me. Out the ways we came in."

x

Once out the main door, Gibbs signals Ziva to move carefully to the rear of the building, past DiNozzo's position while carefully scanning the road and the woods beyond. This is extremely bad. Split apart and alone, they face an enemy who could be anywhere. Backup is so far away it'll take until everything is over for them to arrive. Gibbs knows he should withdraw, take Carson and–

Training the Corps and NCIS had drummed into him saves his life. He ducks, rolls along the ground toward the cover of his parked car as something hums over his head and slams into the door. Ducked behind his car, he looks back at the long arrow quivering in the wood. "_Front_," he calls loudly, "two o'clock, in the hill across the road!"

The beauty of an arrow - why did he use it? - is that it points back to its user. As the other Agents appear at either corner of the front of the building, they hold position in response to Gibbs' yell. DiNozzo virtually crawls in behind the brush, the 2:00 position is toward his side. The arrow marks the launch point.

Adolphus, though he's marked his position, will not hold it. The agents scan the terrain for his likely path.

x

On the other side of the road, blocking the setting sun, the ground ascends sharply, providing a high ground already wrapped in shadows. They can see no movement.

Ziva moves out from the corner of the building, cuts across to Gibbs car when a high '_shweet_' slices through the air and she goes down hard under McGee's body, pinned face down on the ground as another arrow slams into a tree far to their right in front of DiNozzo's corner of the building.

"_Traps_!" Gibbs calls, holding his people where they are. That arrow had come from the far left, down the road. Adolphus would have had to move over two hundred feet, undetected, to have fired it.

"Tim, are you hit?" Ziva asks the man lying on top of her.

"No."

"Then you are having too good a time - _get off_!" McGee complies and together they crawl toward Gibbs' car. Tony carefully scans the area to his right, trusting nothing.

"How is he aiming?" DiNozzo calls in a stage whisper.

"He's not," Gibbs replies, scanning the area carefully, "probability traps; front door, a cut across the front lawn, traps long set. He could be anywhere."

"Wonderful. I vote for–"

Whatever he would have said is cut short by the rustle of branches far to the left on their side of the road. Four Sigs converge but nothing moves. The sound came from beyond the unattended corner of the building. Keeping low, McGee and David hurry back to that corner as Gibbs moves around his car to the opposite side. DiNozzo heads toward the back of the building. Seconds later Gibbs joins Tim and Ziva.

Long shadows cut through tree branches and bushes, turning the area into a zebra-stripped vista of illusions. The dimming light restricts their vision to a smaller and smaller field. Flashlights will mark their positions but within minutes the area will be dark and the advantage will be Adolphus'.

To add to the stress, crickets and katydids begin their own music, filling the background with noise.

"We're not going to get him pinned down like this," Gibbs tells his team. "We're going to have to go out after him."

"'My sword is yours, my Lord'," DiNozzo votes, "figuratively, of course."

"I owe him one," Ziva declares.

"I'm with her," Tim announces.

"Then you're with her. Ten o'clock pincer; we'll cover you."

McGee leads Ziva outward to the left, where they will circle wide and swing back right in an attempt to locate and hopefully cut Adolphus off while Gibbs and Tony scan the area carefully, watching for any target. There's no question: capture if possible - kill if necessary. Senses alert, eyes sharp to pick out any movement, any abnormality in the growing shadows, they move out.

"DiNozzo, two-thirty, cut across the road and get to the high ground."

"What about you, boss?"

"Me? I'm the stupid one; I go up the middle, draw his fire so you get a shot."

DiNozzo hates this plan; the area ahead is clear of brush and cover. "Sorry, boss - you're the sniper, you can move through that brush without making a sound – _and there's nobody stupider than I am_!"

He breaks cover, charges low ahead onto the killing field.

x

Too far out of range, Gibbs can't call to him when Tony hears a soft hum gradually escalating. A bush far to Tony's right snaps, the sound sharp over the night insects and he throws himself flat onto the ground before the hum approaches and passes over the spot where he had been crouching, an instant later clunking into a tree to his left. Tony looks, not believing he's seeing what looks like the blade of a circular saw biting deep into the wood.

He rolls over and fires three shots wildly in the direction of the blade's flight. He's up an instant later and dives through and behind a bush to his right.

Tim and Ziva, hearing the commotion, turn and start back, but Ziva's ankle snags on something in the darkness and she throws herself onto Tim. Both of them fall to the dirt as a sharp '_twang_' announces a long spear which digs deeply into the ground where they had stood.

"Are you okay?" she whispers, her face an inch from his in the gathering darkness.

"Fine." He tries to get up, keeps his voice as low. "You can get off now."

"No," she gasps, "I can't."

His heart leaps in his chest. "Are you _hit_?"

"No," she shakes her head, "I just feel safer here." She kisses his nose, cautiously gets off him but keeps low, carefully searching the darkening woods.

McGee sits up, clutching his chest. "Remind me to spank you when we _are_ safe," he barely keeps this to a whisper.

"That will be exhilarating too."

x

Tony, grateful for his black jacket, has turned it around to wear inside out, hoping his fellows have had enough foresight to obscure the bright white 'NCIS Federal Agent' lettering in back and gold 'shield' in the front. He cannot get word to them, having to trust in their judgment; or in the Probie's case, in Ziva's. He crouches, waits silently, gun ready, determined to blast anything he sees or hears and praying he gets it right the first time. The sun is gone and there's only the dimmest light remaining in the deepening indigo sky. Soon no one without night vision glasses will be able to see his - or her - hand before their face and he prays Adolphus is not so equipped. If he is, then it's 'game over'.

x

Wait; 'Game over'! Hasn't he seen this a hundred times in the movies; the hero pinned down, light and ammo almost gone, an invisible enemy stalking 'silently' through the woods to the accompaniment of these damned crickets; what happens next?

Throwing himself to the side he turns in the roll and, flat to the dirt, squeezes off two shots at the spot behind where he had crouched.

'Damn,' he curses mentally, 'I shot at nothing and guess what I hit? Where's a Hollywood _h__ack_ when I need one?'

x

In the high ground across the road, Gibbs hears the shots and is about to break cover until he hears nothing further. The sound is definitely a Sig; he can't be mistaken in that report. But if none of his people have given the 'all clear' then they still run silent. He can neither cause them to reveal their positions or to break his own.

He'd been furious with DiNozzo for his impulsive move but the man had been right. He was more skilled at moving silently through brush, leaving DiNozzo the only remaining path - up the middle. He just hopes the man hasn't charged impulsively to his death.

Listening carefully, not trying to tune out the sounds of nature but working with them, he hears a changing area of quiet approaching. Some insects have stopped their songs, others resume, and the quiet is moving. Getting behind a thick lump of bushes, the disturbed night insects silent about him, he's able to hear that 'zone of quiet' coming closer, closer, blending with his own, the area of silence is all about him and a pair of sneakers passes him in utter silence, only the tops of shoes and ankles visible. One, two, three…

He straightens, five feet behind the man, Sig held ready.

"Drop the rifle on the ground." His firm voice cuts through the short distance between them like a knife.

Letting go of the weapon, Ron Adolphus allows it to fall to the dirt at his feet and looks back over his shoulder. "Well played, sir. I surrender."

xxx

Gibbs and the team, returning to the Squad Room after securing their prisoners, are surprised to discover uniformed Army Officers at each of their desks, working at their computers. "What the _Hell _are you doing?" Gibbs demands of the Major who would violate the sanctity of his desk. "Who are you?"

"Jethro," Director Shepherd's voice comes down from above. They look up, find her standing on the platform on the upper level. "Join me, people," she directs, turns and walks toward MTAC.

Monumentally angry, Gibbs leads the charge across Operations and up the stairs, but they do not catch up before Gibbs is obliged to use the retinal scanner at the side of the door to gain admittance to the secure facility.

That Shepherd had not held the door is particularly significant. Gibbs doubts she wants to make him angrier than he already is - more likely she wants the seconds this delay buys her. They find her near the large screen, standing beside two 4-Star Generals. One look at her is enough to show the Agents that she is as angry as they are, just 'concealing' it better.

There are no technicians manning the control stations at the left wall. All the screens are dark. Clearly this is to be a personal - if extremely private - conversation.

"People, these are Generals Albert Norris and Nathan Pike, Pentagon."

"Hello. What the _hell _are your people doing at our desks?" For Gibbs in his present mood, this is almost polite.

"They're deleting all references in your files to 'Project Dragonfire'. Furthermore, all your physical evidence is being confiscated."

Gibbs is about to express his outrage in far more lurid terms but McGee cuts in first, "They can't access our computers - not without our pass codes."

"I _gave_ them your pass codes, Agent McGee." Shepherd communicates to all of them that she'd done it unwillingly and that they had _better_ not question her on it.

x

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Pike says officiously, "the United States Government takes the _secrecy_ of 'Project Dragonfire' very seriously. There is a great deal at stake here, more than you can know. We are taking charge of Jack Carson and your Investigation, and shall make all necessary reports to the President."

"The _hell_ you are," Gibbs declares.

"I smell the ripe stink of a cover-up," DiNozzo agrees.

"Agent DiNozzo!" Shepherd tries to rein in her man.

"I'm going to give you some information you need," Pike resumes command of the conversation, "though by no means all - and I _strongly_ advise that you forget every word of it upon leaving this room." If Pike's intent is to make them nervous, he's succeeding. He doesn't mention any consequence of not heeding his advice. There's no need.

x

"Dr. John Carson is being removed to a special facility from which he may - or may not - emerge at some future date. That is strictly dependent upon his cooperation. Ronald Adolphus' actions in this recent incident have not been sanctioned, nor were they in the best interest of the U,S. Government, but that is being overlooked due to his previous and future 'services' which he renders when his talents are required."

The agents exchange looks. This is far worse than they'd anticipated.

"Tomorrow, while being transported to a Federal Detention Facility, he will escape custody, but in light of your involvement in this case we wanted to ease your consciences: the reports of three deaths in that escape will be mendacious 'icing'."

"What about Carson?" Gibbs demands. The men are both in Holding Cells in NCIS' lowermost chambers while their futures are being mapped.

"_Officially_ John Carson was - or rather will be - caught in the crossfire during that escape and was killed. Most unfortunate."

Gibbs stalks up to the General until they are virtually nose to nose; "Let me get this straight; you're letting Adolphus _g__o_?" The man's easy surrender to Gibbs now makes too much sense.

"He is too valuable a Resource to be allowed to relax in a prison;" Pike tells him levelly, emphasizing the capital, unfazed by Gibbs' belligerent fury. "He has too much work to do."

"_What is he_?"

"He's a tool; a useful tool in situations when the US Government needs certain things done that cannot be done. That is all you need to know."

It is no longer a mystery how the man has escaped capture and prosecution all these years with the police departments of several states, several countries, hunting him.

"Adolphus' 'hits' are $25,000 per; _where_ did he get the money? From _you_?" That baiting question, biting though it is, is filled with such dreadful implications he does not want to be right.

"Don't be absurd," General Norris answers, goaded into speaking, "he got it from the Swiss."

"The _Swiss_?" Switzerland has a long and cherished stand on neutrality; they make alliances and arouse the enmity of no one. That is one of the main things that make their banking system so popular throughout the world; total neutrality begets total secrecy and a laissez-faire system approached by no other government in the world.

x

"From a numbered Swiss bank account," Pike tells him sourly; the information already divulged so he might as well answer it, "we haven't been able to trace - yet - who is funding it." Gibbs is certain that overly confident 'yet' should be replaced by 'ever', "But in recent months John Carson's assets in various poorly disguised accounts have increased by over $16,000,000. He can easily afford the $225,000 it would have cost to wipe out his colleagues."

"And the $100,000 already paid?" Gibbs demands, anger overwhelmed by incredulity as the outrageous plot continues to unfold. Unfortunately, he has the feeling it is soon to grow worse.

"Adolphus keeps that. We can't be seen to be interfering in that, it would risk blowing his 'cover' and rendering him useless to the United States Government."

Gibbs' blood pressure spikes. "One of my Agents was almost _killed_ trying to bring him in after catching him red handed murdering Miranda Higgins!"

"Yes, that was unfortunate." No one believes he thinks so. "It was all part of the bigger picture that no one in civil law enforcement could be informed of Ronald Adolphus' status."

"We're _not_ _Civil_!" Gibbs exclaims forcefully, feeling at that moment that both senses are understatements. "Do you have any idea what 'NCIS' _stands for_?"

"I'm sure your Agent will understand that his sacrifice - his _near_ sacrifice I should say - was part of the greater good in his Country's interest."

"Why don't you ask _her_ yourself, General? She's standing right in front of you."

Pike's eyes flicker to the knot of Agents. The expression on the Israeli woman's face renders the question pointless.

"What about Al and Nicola Morrison; Carla Stratton; Joseph Parsuer and Miranda Higgins? What about _the__m_? And their _families_?"

"Collateral damage. Their service will be missed and their deaths are regretted, but sometimes the best interests of the United States demand such personal sacrifice."

"_Sacrifice_?" Gibbs explodes, his team no more than a second behind him. But Jenny Shepherd steps into the din before it can escalate out of control.

"Damn it, that's enough! _No one_ likes this situation, least of all me," her words are a slashing sword, "but those are our _Orders_!"

x

The Agents are appalled by what they've seen and heard. It had been their hope that, having captured Carson and the 'Iceman', they would learn the reason why so many had died and what was done with the secrets. Most importantly they could give satisfaction - if not closure - to families and beloved.

Now they hear in the General's implicit message that there are secrets best left undisturbed.

x

But before the two Generals leave, Pike adds a final caveat: "You have all done outstanding work in defense of our Navy and Marine forces and their families. The United States Government would consider it 'inconvenient' to lose you."

The two men depart, ascend the ramp and walk out the door, leaving the outraged - and chilled - Agents behind.

xxx

Everyone else has gone home for the night, their work 'concluded' by fiat, but Gibbs cannot let it go. He sits at his desk in the halo of a single bulb, the room dark save for the lights of the base slipping in through the windows. He is so deeply engrossed in his thoughts that he doesn't hear anything until a movement in the outer edge of the light attracts his attention. He looks up to find Jennifer Shepherd standing on the other side of the desk. He turns on his lamp, the light seeming to be swallowed by the gloom.

"There was a day I couldn't sneak up on you," she tells him softly.

"There was a day when I was sure who I was working for."

"You still know who you work for."

"Really?"

"You work for the men and women who wear the uniforms, for their families and for those who depend upon them. And you work for me."

He shakes his head sadly; it is no longer that easy. He had thought, a year ago, that he had seen the worst of the hypocrisy of 'National Security', and it had driven him to Mexico.

Now he realizes he hadn't even come close, hadn't skimmed the surface of what some would do. He had considered himself hard, occasionally brutal in the interests of justice, but now he sees he has never been truly hard, and he prays he will die before he is. "I've trusted you with my life. I've trusted _them _with my life and the lives of my Team. But most of the ones I've trusted could be trusted."

"And today?"

He leans back in his chair, falling out of the light, "Today I'm not so sure."

"Sounds to me like a Crisis of Faith."

"This is worse than a 'crisis of faith'." He'd had one crisis of faith already; he does not want another. "What do you recommend?"

"Not Mexico. But we've recently hired someone whose profession is dealing with 'crises of faith'. That's one of the main reasons I agreed to bring her in. Why not go see her?"

He does not answer her. O'Mallory or his boat - quite a choice. He's avoided seeing her, their encounters so far had not been pleasant. He'd cleared some of the air, but he still considers some of it quite muddy indeed. And he has yet, if ever, to get over his discomfort over her. A woman Priest, despite her status with NCIS as its official Chaplain for this district ... he cannot accept it, cannot grow comfortable with it.

Despite himself, Ducky's words at Kate's death come back to haunt him: 'You and I are a couple of old chauvinists. Women will never be equal in our eyes until they are equal in death.'

Despite his attraction to her - certainly the redhead is a handsome woman - there is much that makes him very uncomfortable. He has to accept her position in NCIS, but that doesn't mean he has to accept her.

x

Granted they had 'cleared the air', at least he hopes they did; he would not want her as an enemy or an adversary - if such a thing were even possible - but he is still a long way from feeling comfortable around her. In less than a day after that 'interview' in Interrogation One she'd gone from principal witness in a case to someone intricately connected with NCIS. He's not sure where either of them fit in that 'new' structure.

Then again, in his viewpoint the 'structure' of the entire United States Government has just taken an unpleasant change, and he is not sure of his place in that either. Certainly he hasn't been nai., he knows well the unpleasant realities - but the reality is now no longer just 'unpleasant' - and he knows he is not alone in this crisis.

"I'll _think_ about it." He sits forward, uncomfortable with more than his concerns regarding the woman. "We still don't know why Carson tipped his hand, but my gut tells me it has something to do with whoever is holding the purse strings."

"You'll find out," Jenny admits, "though with the case being 'closed' I can't authorize you to do anything, nor even allocate any resources."

Jethro looks up at his old partner, much passing between them that will not be spoken of openly. "It'll be like old times."


	10. Epilogues

Epilogue 1  
Monday, Labor Day, 1014 hours

Rev. Siobhan O'Mallory sits in the quiet of the dimly lighted booth, her red leather bound 'Book of Common Prayer' open on her lap. The light is barely enough to see read by. She does not have to read it however; the text is so familiar to her that she need only see a few words to recall it all. The day is hot but an advantage of the Gothic stone church, hard to heat in winter, is that it is comfortably cool in the summer. That coolness keeps the Confessional booths, halfway up the church on the left side, comfortable.

As usual she doesn't know how many people, if any, will visit her this Labor Day morning. It doesn't matter; she will aid someone or have a quiet hour for prayer and contemplation. She's here to serve.

The wooden door to the booth beside her opens and closes. Someone has entered and kneels facing the foot square screen of fabric that separates them. She closes the book, settles it upon her lap. There is no light in the other booth so she cannot see in, but she knows that, with effort, she can be distinguished. Taking off her gold framed glasses as a sign of 'assurance', the booth reduced to a soft blur, she raises her hand toward the unknown Penitent. "The Lord be in your heart and upon your lips that you may truly and humbly confess your sins; in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

A young man's familiar voice begins, "Mother O'Mallory, it's–"

"I do not know who comes to me;" she hastens to interrupt him, knowing only a young man's voice, one that has recently become familiar, and she hastens to forget the association; "it is to God alone that you speak through me."

"Of course," his embarrassment is all too plain, "I just - that is - I really _need _to tell you." It is several seconds before he can. "The other day - I tried to save someone from getting killed. I had - I had a gun - it wasn't mine, but I needed it to save her. I _did_ save her, but..." He can barely say the words, his voice reduced to a whisper buried under heavy boulders of guilt. "To do it I had to _murder_ a man..."

Epilogue 2  
Monday: 1237 hours

Dawn Caldwell closes her last suitcase on Abby's living room couch and tugs it off, sets it with the other two in the middle of the floor. She flips back her long blonde hair that had fallen forward when she bent over. "Well, that's it."

They are a study in contrasts. They always have been and perhaps that is one of the reasons they had remained friends for so long. Even to clothing - Abby wears her black velvet 'vampire dress' highlighted with silver Halloween charms, though that holiday is weeks away. Her black garbed, black twin pig-tailed appearance is far removed from Dawn's light beige slacks, pale blue blouse and long straight blonde hair. The last time Dawn had worn pigtails had been with Abby's influence.

"That's it," Abby admits, trying to fight back a twinge of unhappiness. The weekend has gone so fast - especially when she spent most of it at work, attempting to solve five murders. The music from the radio on the tall black bookshelf changes, allowing her something else to talk about instead of saying goodbye. "Palestrina's 'Missa De Beata Virgine'," Abby identifies after six notes, "I've always liked that one, particularly the ninth measure."

"Remember all the times we played 'Name that Tune' with these?"

"Do I _ever_. I won most of the time."

"Half the time," Dawn protests.

"Only after you turned fifteen." They listen to the music for a few moments, but it can only be too few and it only momentarily distracts. They have to leave well before Dawn's 3:00 pm flight to Louisiana.

"Well," Dawn says, clasping her hands and looking about the black room, "pretty soon I'll be gone and you can have your noi– I mean 'music' - back."

Abby shakes her head, not wanting to think of her friend leaving again so soon. They'd looked forward to this weekend for so long and it had been broken up so badly by murders she doesn't want to contemplate, which had ended in a threat from the Government that had chilled her soul. "I think I'll keep this station on."

"Really?" Dawn's surprised.

"Really."

"Am I finally curing you of rock?"

"No way, it's just that when it's on … I don't know ... you're not so _far away_ then."

"I'm always just a phone call away," Dawn assures her, not wanting to be caught up in sentimental goodbyes. It's times like these, seeing each other for a few days each year after living practically next door for nearly two decades, that make partings harder to bear.

"It's not the same," Abby says, pulling her friend into a tight hug.

x

"No, it isn't," Dawn admits when they can pull apart, but she turns away before Abby can see her moist eyes, before they both start to cry.

"It's been great having you," Abby says, "I'm just sorry–"

"Don't be," Dawn tells her, turning back to her friend, "it was a great weekend, but …." There is no way she can get the murders out of her mind. She hadn't seen the bodies, and even though Abby was stingy with information she knew one man had been shot with an arrow, a woman's head had nearly been severed, another woman skewered with a sword…. She doesn't want to think of any more. Perhaps – no, definitely – it's better she had not seen any of the bodies. "Are you sure you can't tell me the climax?" she asks, trying one last time to wheedle the story out of her. She had been present for so much of the mystery, been privy to so many of the details, that being deprived of the ending seems so unfair.

"I told you - I can't tell you. It's a secret - and Gibbs told me how much the Government likes its secrets." In fact, her heart had frozen when he'd told her the story, the almost 'X-Files' ending he'd shared with her but which she could never reveal. She'll never tell her friend how the Army had come in and taken over, telling Gibbs and his team that if they spoke about the incidents of this weekend, the Government would 'regret losing them'.

"I can't."

x

"I just wish it didn't have to end so quickly," Abby says plaintively, "I barely saw you."

Dawn shrugs. "Well, maybe someday you'll come home," she tells her pointedly. It's been years since Abby has returned to Jefferson Parish. "We'll see each other again," she assures her. "I'd love to let my class get a look at you." Dawn thinks longingly of her new group of kindergarten children at St. Alphonsus. It will be so soon now; fly home this afternoon, school in the morning.

"They'll run screaming into the night."

"I don't know. I imagine some of them might find you pretty tame," she predicts with a teasing grin; "you'll just have to come down and find out."

"Count on it. I already have my vacation during Mardi Gras."

"Perfect, only … what'll you _wear_?" Abby's normal Goth attire is suitable for a year-round Mardi Gras, what could she get that would top it? "Never mind," she changes her mind before the 'Mysterious of the Dark' can answer, holding her hands up defensively, "I don't think I want to know."

"Then you'll be surprised."

"_Scandalized_ is more like it."

"You'll see. So, Mardi Gras," she swears, "and my vacation is already cleared with the Director."

"Mardi Gras," Dawn agrees. "And if you even _hint_ at a hotel I shall spank _you_ to a rosy blister! I _still_ owe you for that night I went out with Marty O'Connell."

"You were eleven years old and swore you'd be back at eight o'clock - not two-thirty! I was going _berserk_ hunting for you. You think I _wasn't_ going to tell your mother when she got home?"

"I couldn't sit for a _week_."

"Was it worth it?" Abby challenges, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah," she admits, "it was. But I still owe you."

"Careful, Sunshine," she warns with a smirk, "you're liable to find out I like it."

Dawn halts, shocked, trying to discern if Abby is joking or not. "You scare me sometimes, Vampirstein," she repeats, not certain she can tell her old babysitter that enough. "Are you serious?"

"You'll just have to wait for Bourbon Street to find out."

"It'll be a gas!"

x

Abby stops dead, slaps her forehead. "Gas! I forgot to get gas!" The 'Batmobile', her black convertible which doesn't resemble its fictional namesake except in minor decorations, had had a heavy workout this weekend. She looks around, there is still some refrigerated food she is giving Dawn to take back to her family, treats not available in Louisiana. They have to be loaded into cooling chests before the women leave. "We'll never make it if we - look, I'll run down, get to the gas station while you finish, then I'll come back and we can leave just in time to make the flight."

"Okay."

Taking her keys off the table by the door, Abby hurries out and down the three flights, berating herself for not having thought of this earlier, resenting now every moment that separates them because of her carelessness.

x

Dawn smiles, shakes her head. Her friend certainly has enough cause to be scatterbrained. After this weekend, if she had the responsibilities Abby did, she'd probably be squirrel food too. She heads into the bedroom - coffin room, actually - to make one last check when there's a knock on the door. She crosses the room.

"Yes, who is it?" she calls through the door.

"UPS delivery for Abigail Skiooto."

'Skiooto,' Dawn thinks with a grin. How badly could someone who works with the public foul up a simple name like 'Sciuto'? She opens the door.

The tall blonde man in the brown uniform holds a package and clipboard. "Abigail Skiooto?"

'Oh, God, he could play the lead in 'Rocky Horror!' Dawn thinks, sorrier now that she's leaving. "Sciuto, you just missed her, I'm afraid. You probably even passed her on the stairs. Can I take it?"

"I guess so."

x

The punch to her left eye is so swift Dawn never sees it. She's knocked backward, feels all sensation die. Her feet collide with her suitcases and she falls hard upon the floor as the door slams.

His knee comes down with brutal force on her pelvis, her scream of pain cut off by a vicious punch to her face, then another and another, the impacts slam her head back over and over onto the floor. She tries to get her arms up, screaming shrilly, blindly tries to ward off the punches which keep coming with merciless fury.

Then he's off her, his knee no longer pinning her down. She can't see as a hand closes about her blouse, yanking her up. She shrieks as she feels the blouse rip open. She's dragged to her feet, his fist slams into her stomach, doubles her over…

xx

Abby climbs the stairs to her apartment and as she makes the final turn on the landing she's annoyed to find her door open. "Come on, Sunshine," she calls, crossing the landing, "you were raised in a townhouse, not a ba–"

Her living room is destroyed. Chairs overturned, the heavy bookcase toppled, the television and coffee table are both smashed. The chaos made even more surreal by the blood that covers walls, furniture, everything. "Dawn?" She rushes in, calls frantically, "Dawn, honey?" She looks to her right and shrieks. "_DAWN_!"

The blonde woman lies on her back, topless, her body battered, bloody and covered by darkening bruises. Abby rushes to her, horrified to feel the coolness of her friend's skin.

She's not breathing!

Abby presses her ear to the woman's bare chest, finding terrible silence.

"No! Oh, God - _NO_!" Tilting Dawn's head back, she bends over her and, pinching her bloodied nose lightly, knowing the risk, she covers Dawn's mouth with hers and breathes hard, comes up to draw a fast breath and does it again. Shifting position, she puts her hands together, fingers interlaced between and below the woman's breasts and shoves hard - again - again, uses all her terror enhanced strength. "Come on, Dawn!" She won't allow herself to realize her fear or she'll break.

Bending down to breathe into her mouth again, she yanks her cell phone out of her pocket, flips it open and presses a speed dial button. Four breaths and she's back over her still friend, tasting blood in her own mouth from her smeared lips. Her body trembles as she drops the phone on the floor and shoves hard on the Dawn's chest.

/Gibbs,/ the speaker answers.

"Get to my apartment _now_!" Abby cries, bending down to breathe into Dawn's mouth. "Get Ducky!"

/What's wrong?/ the phone asks as she straightens to thrust hard into her friend's still chest.

"Get me an _AMBULANCE__!_" she screams frantically, her voice breaks as she tries to fight back tears of terror. "_NOW_!" She bends to force more air into Dawn's motionless lungs.

"Don't you _die_ on me, Sunshine!" she cries and thrusts with all her strength, tears streaming down her face. "_**DON'T YOU DIE ON ME**_!"

Continues in: 'Assassin'.  
A deadly enemy hunts Abby. Can Gibbs and the Team save her?

Author's Note: For the rest of the story within the story, and to understand what happened to Jimmy in Chapter Two, jump to the year 2035 and meet his daughter, Private Investigator Susan Linda Palmer in 'Otherworld'.


End file.
